Ryan Spoon

Spoon founded beRecruited, an online recruiting platform connecting high school student-athletes with college coaches; he has said he founded it while a collegiate swimmer at Duke University.⁠[1]

beRecruited was founded in 2000. In 2007 it took a $1.2 million seed round from Madison Parker Capital in exchange for a majority stake, and in June 2011 it acquired Fanvibe, a Y Combinator Summer 2010 startup, whose founder Vishwas Prabhakara became beRecruited’s CEO.⁠[2]

In 2012 the private equity firm The Raine Group acquired beRecruited; the deal was not announced at the time and was confirmed by Prabhakara in October 2013. As of October 2013, beRecruited had more than two million registered student-athletes.⁠[2][3]

From 2003 to 2007 Spoon worked at eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry in internet marketing and social media and led Kijiji.com.⁠[4]

From 2009 to 2012 Spoon was a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners and led Dogpatch Labs.⁠[4]

Spoon spent more than eight years at ESPN, serving as senior vice president of product and design from 2012 to 2017 and senior vice president of digital and social from 2017 to 2020, overseeing digital editorial, performance and strategy and helping shape ESPN’s digital experiences, mobile apps and fantasy games.⁠[5][3]

He was named to the Sports Business Journal “Forty Under 40” list twice, in 2018 and 2020.⁠[3]

From November 2020 to October 2021 Spoon was chief operating officer of BetMGM, a sportsbook and iGaming company founded in 2018 as a joint venture between MGM Resorts and Entain Holdings.⁠[6]

From 2021 Spoon was chief operating officer of Sorare, an NFT-based fantasy sports company, where he worked on its expansion into the U.S. market and the launches of Sorare: NBANBAThe National Basketball Association (NBA) is a North American professional basketball league with 30 teams.Open the full entry and Sorare: MLBMLBMajor League Baseball (MLB) is a baseball league comprising 30 clubs in the United States and Canada.Open the full entry, whose launch events were held in July and October 2022 respectively.⁠[4][3][7]

On June 14, 2023, YahooYahooYahoo is an internet brand founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, with email, search, news, finance, sports, and advertising businesses. It developed from a web directory into a portal, underwent major acquisitions and security incidents, and sold its operating business in 2017, when the original listed company became Altaba. Apollo-managed funds acquired the brand’s operating business in 2021. Yahoo launched the AI answer service Scout in 2026.Open the full entry announced the appointment of Spoon as president of Yahoo Sports, reporting directly to Yahoo CEO Jim LanzoneJim LanzoneJim Lanzone is the CEO of Yahoo.Open the full entry. Spoon said he looked forward to “creating new growth opportunities that take our product and content offerings to the next level.”⁠[3]

He later became president of Yahoo Media Group, overseeing Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo News and Yahoo Streaming and leading the group’s strategy, growth and innovation.⁠[8]

On April 30, 2026, Yahoo Media Group launched a sports business hub on the Yahoo Sports and Yahoo Finance websites, with partners including Front Office Sports, Sportico and Sports Business Journal. “Rapid changes in technology, media rights, and the investment landscape are making the business of sports more important than ever,” Spoon said.⁠[9]

Spoon invests in startups and venture funds individually or through SCN Ventures, across consumer, commerce, sports and web3; companies he lists among those investments include Epic GamesEpic GamesEpic Games is a video game and software company headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, founded by Tim Sweeney in 1991, known for the Unreal Engine game engine, Fortnite and the Epic Games Store, and widely noted for its antitrust lawsuits against Apple and Google.Open the full entry, Hims & Hers, Tonal, Athletic Brewing and MyFitnessPal.⁠[10]

Personal website: https://www.ryanspoon.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

X: Public account: https://x.com/ryanspoon (opens in a new window).⁠[11]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanspoon (opens in a new window).⁠[11]