Dave Finocchio is an American businessman who co-founded the sports news website

Bleacher Report ''Bleacher Report'' (often abbreviated as B/R) is a website that focuses on sports and sports culture. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, with offices in New York City and London. ''Bleacher Report'' was acquired by Time Warner's Turner B ...

, which is the second-largest digital sports publisher with over 45 million monthly readers. In 2012, Finocchio led the company through an acquisition by

Turner Broadcasting System Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. was an American television and media conglomerate founded by Ted Turner in 1965. Based in Atlanta, Georgia, it merged with Time Warner (later WarnerMedia) on October 10, 1996. As of April 2022, all of its asse ...

for approximately $175 million. He stepped away from daily operations of Bleacher Report in 2014 but returned to the company as its

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

in 2016.

Career

Finnochio graduated from the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; ; ND) is a Private university, private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. Founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Cathol ...

with a bachelor's degree in economics and history. He lived in Alumni Hall.

Bleacher Report

Bleacher Report was founded in 2005 by David Finocchio, Alexander Freund, Bryan Goldberg, and Dave Nemetz while they were working in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

—four friends and sports fans who had been high school classmates at

Menlo School Menlo School, commonly referred to as just Menlo, is a private college preparatory school in Atherton, California, United States. The school comprises a middle school, grades 6–8, with approximately 230 students and a high school, grades 9–1 ...

Atherton, California Atherton ( ) is an incorporated town in San Mateo County, California, United States. Its population was 6,823 as of July 2023 estimates. The town's zoning regulations permit only one single-family home per acre in new subdivisions, though smal ...

. They saw that sports was not entertaining enough for younger fans, and sports journalists were out of touch with the college demographic. Finocchio found that events such as the

NFL draft The NFL draft, officially known as the Annual Player Selection Meeting, is an annual event which serves as the most common source of player recruitment in the National Football League. Each team is given a position in the drafting order in reve ...

, the

NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...

free-agency window and the NBA trade deadline were not fully covered by

sports journalism Sports journalism is a form of writing that reports on matters pertaining to sporting topics and competitions. Sports journalism has its roots in coverage of horse racing and boxing in the early 1800s, mainly targeted towards elites, and into t ...

at the time. Using Google Insights, Finocchio discovered the stories people were searching for to build a media company. He mined data based on search traffic to discover what people wanted to see about every sport and team on a daily basis. Rather than focus on individual site views, Finocchio and his team focused on scaling their audience and introduced hundreds of newsletters based on specific teams and leagues. The newsletters showed high engagement rates with over 70 percent open rates. The newsletters, sent three times a week, included relevant stories from both Bleacher Report and other sources. Eventually, the newsletters were converted into a

mobile app A mobile application or app is a computer program or software application designed to run on a mobile device such as a smartphone, phone, tablet computer, tablet, or smartwatch, watch. Mobile applications often stand in contrast to desktop appli ...

. The content was later adapted to social platforms as well. During the first two years of running Bleacher Report, Finocchio worked part-time in private equity before leaving the industry to work with Bleacher Report full-time. In 2012, Turner Media acquired Bleacher Report for $175 million. In 2014, Finocchio stepped away from day-to-day responsibilities in the company. However, in 2016, he returned to the company as its CEO. In February 2019, Finnochio announced that he would step down as the company's CEO to be replaced by Howard Mittman.

The Cool Down

In 2022, Finnocchio co-founded The Cool Down, a media platform covering climate solutions and environmentally-friendly living.

Media appearances

Since the foundation of Bleacher Report, Finocchio has given commentary about what makes media companies successful and the future of the industry. His opinions have been featured in publications such as ''

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

'', ''

Digiday ''Digiday'' is an online trade magazine for online media founded in 2008 by Nick Friese. It is headquartered in New York City, with offices in London and Tokyo. Description ''Digiday'' provides daily online news about advertising, publishing, a ...

'', ''

Recode ''Recode'' (stylized as recode; formerly ''Re/code'') was a technology news website that focused on the business of Silicon Valley. Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher founded it in January 2014, after they left Dow Jones and the similar website ...

'', ''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide writing in 16 languages. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency ...

'', and ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

''. In 2013, he spoke at the

MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (SSAC) is an annual event that provides a forum for industry professionals (executives and leading researchers) and students to discuss the increasing role of analytics in the sports industry. The confere ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Finocchio, Dave Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American chief executives People from Mountain View, California Notre Dame College of Arts and Letters alumni