Meadowlark Media has found its next CEO, and it is a familiar face to the sports-centric media company, which was founded by former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard and former ESPN president John Skipper.
The company says that Bimal Kapadia will become its new CEO, succeeding Skipper, who exited the company earlier this year. Kapadia had been Meadowlark’s COO since it launched, and managed the company’s relationship with Draftkings, and brokered the deal for Pablo Torre’s show with The Athletic, among other deals.
“Bimal has the experience, care and, most importantly, the vision to make our weird spaceship a new kind of media machine as turbulence rattles the rest of the industry and country,” Le Batard tells The Hollywood Reporter. “He and we want to set a fiercely independent journalistic standard that is at once from another time and ahead of its time. The modern age demands different thinkers. Meadowlark will be a progressive leader because Bimal ensures we’re guided and governed by one.”
In an interview, Kapadia says that with the Draftkings deal for Le Batard’s show, and The Athletic deal for Torre’s show, he is focused on using that foundation to build out new and spinoff programming.
“I’m actually more keen on derivatives of our shows,” Kapadia says. “How can ideas that we’re presenting in Pablo’s show incubate a scripted or unscripted series idea? How can a concept that’s in Dan’s network of ideas that he’s having there springboard another series?
“Where we feel we have an advantage with Meadowlark is that trust in national media is fractured,” Kapadia adds. “Knowing that we have two anchor deals in place, a licensing partnership with DraftKings for Dan’s show and a licensing partnership with New York Times and The Athletic and Pablo’s show, It gives us almost perfect predictability for the next two and a half years, three years, four years of our company. That allows us now to be focused on, how do we grow this network?
In fact, Kapadia believes that the reputation and rapport that both Le Batard and Torre have built with their audience will bring a credibility and authenticity to the entire venture. Torre, for example, has had a slew of investigative scoops, including a story about The Los Angeles Clippers and Kawhi Leonard that made international headlines.
“I think people are finding comfort and faith and safety with trusted personalities that they know. And I think Dan and Pablo are two guys that represent a little bit of: If they’re saying something, they know that it’s well researched, it’s backed up, it’s sourced,” Kapadia says. “It’s not just shock reaction or gasbaggery, right? It’s actually founded on something, and, as best possible, with journalism in short supply, we are as close to an independent platform as we think we can get without having to sacrifice our journalistic credibility.”
“Dan is one of the best storytellers, thinkers, creatives that’s out there,” he adds. “My job in this role is to get him out of the thinking about what needs to happen from this company’s standpoint, and get him focusing on creating the best creative, delivering the best vision for what this place could be, and letting me do the quote, unquote business of it.”
