Virtual MVPD Fubo has a new leader of product design operations for its sports-centric streaming TV service, tapping former Spotify veteran Dan Sormaz as SVP of Design.
Sormaz, who earlier spent a decade at Spotify, including as VP of design for the popular music and podcast service, joined Fubo this week, reporting to Chief Product Officer Mike Berkley. At Fubo, Sormaz is heading up the design organization, which is responsible for user experience and how Fubo subscribers interact with the live TV streaming product.
Sormaz brings 20 years of experience in UX design, including his most recent role as VP of Design at web 3 startup Sorare, a company in the digital collectibles and fantasy sports space that partners with NBA, MLB, Premiere League and other leading sports leagues. Before that he was at Spotify since joining in 2012, where he launched consumer products and most recently led design for Spotify’s recommendations organization, overseeing features such as its Home Feed, AI DJ and personalized playlists. Earlier in his career Sormaz led design at TV startup Boxee, which was acquired by Samsung in 2013, and media companies News Corp and AOL.
Berkley, who joined Fubo as product chief in December 2020, also previously worked at Spotify, serving as VP of product management from 2012-2014 and overlapping with Sormaz at the company.
“Dan is not only the best design leader in media that I know, he is also a great product strategist,” said Berkely in a statement. “I partnered closely with Dan at Spotify for several years and am so thrilled for him to lead our design team at Fubo. With the proliferation of so many streaming apps, the TV industry has become very fragmented and is not aligned with consumer needs. We believe Fubo’s aggregated content model solves this issue and, with Dan guiding us on delivering an intuitive and useful user experience, we are confident that we can evolve how consumers watch television.”
Fubo brought on Sormaz as the company is working to build out a more personalized and intuitive user experience. In the announcement, the vMVPD reiterated that it’s leveraging proprietary AI and computer vision technology it scooped up through a 2021 acquisition of Edisn.ai to build a more interactive experience. The live TV streaming service, which competes head-to-head with other vMPVDs such as YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV, as well as traditional MVPDs as it positions itself as a cable TV replacement, touted its tech prowess as the first vMVPD to launch 4K streaming and multi-view features (in 2018 and 2020, respectively). Comparatively, YouTube TV introduced multi-view in March and just last month expanded the feature for select channels beyond sports. And although Fubo counted sequential subscriber losses in Q1, the company said its features have helped boost engagement, with users now averaging over 100 hours per month on the platform.
“Fubo really hits the sweet spot for me - I am so passionate about streaming, having spent more than a decade in that world across music, podcasts and video/TV, and I am a huge sports fan,” said Sormaz. “User experiences for streaming services reflect the ever-changing world around them. With an evolving content landscape, shifting consumer behaviors and emerging new technology, I believe we're entering an exciting new era for TV streaming UX. I am looking forward to reuniting with Mike and working with the fantastic Fubo team to build what’s next for TV.”
During Fubo’s first quarter earnings call CEO and co-founder David Gandler discussed plans to launch refreshed apps this fall that would include new features and more personalization.
“We plan to transform how users engage with streaming video and traditional DVR,” Gandler said in May while talking up the forthcoming apps that will be tied to a unified platform and supported by new back-end infrastructure and design.
He also pointed to features like instant highlights, where users could have specific views and see different plays and game highlights within their DVR.
“Think about condensed games within your DVR, where we’ll be leveraging all of our AI opportunities there,” Gandler said.
As of the end of Q1 2023 Fubo counted 1.28 million subscribers in North America.