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September, 2024

Foxtel Group restructures leadership as Hubbl boss follows Binge MD Amanda Laing out the door

Foxtel Group has confirmed Hubbl managing director Les Wigan is no longer at the streaming aggregation platform he led the launch of just six months ago. His departure has triggered a reshuffle of ranks at Foxtel Group and a recalibration of last year’s restructure into two revenue-generating areas: Aggregation and streaming and advertising.

Wigan, who has spent more than two decades in various roles across the Fox and News Corp networks, is understood to have exited the Hubbl business earlier in the year. He has relocated to the US to take on an advisory role at Fox and Venu Sports, Fox Corp’s new joint venture sports streaming platform with Disney’s ESPN and Warner Bros Discovery.

Prior to his appointment to the helm of Hubbl in May last year, Wigan had spent three years as Foxtel Group’s chief product, technology and operations officer, and was previously chief operations officer of Kayo Sports, BINGE, and FLASH, and Fox Sports before that.

Wigan’s exit was communicated amidst a suite of structural changes across the group in a note sent to staff by CEO Patrick Delaney in May. It is understood that the decision was made to re-organise the model following Wigan’s relocation and the departure of chief commercial officer and Binge MD Amanda Laing, who finished up her time with the company this month after flagging her exit back in April.

The new structure consolidates the four divisions created in Foxtel’s 2023 organisational restructure into two siloes that reflect the business’ key revenue generating areas: aggregation (Foxtel and Hubbl) and streaming and advertising (Kayo, BINGE and Foxtel Media). Both Wigan and Laing’s remits, previously accounting for two of the four divisions, have been collapsed into the roles of Julian Ogrin – formerly head of the streaming sports and advertising division housing Kayo – and Hilarly Perchard – previously in charge of the subscription TV division housing the legacy Foxtel business.

In accordance with their expanded remits, Orgin’s title has changed to CEO of streaming and advertising, while Perchard will be CEO of Foxtel retail and Hubbl, with his responsibilities expanded to include non-sport content acquisitions and group strategy.

As part of the restructure, the media business has also appointed a new chief technology officer, with Ernst & Young (EY) former head of engineering Paul Meller joining as Group CTO.

Meller, who has spent the last decade in New York City, has 20 years of global experience leading product and technology organisations across Google, Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal and 21st Century Fox.

The appointment marks the reunification of Foxtel Group’s technology teams, which were split into operational units last year to enable the build of Hubbl. Per Delany’s note to staff, Meller has been charged with bringing the technology teams back together to leverage the group’s scale, simplify processes and build out new products.