Football: English Premier League appoints new chief executive
By Prof Dr Ian Blackshaw
One of the top jobs in professional football has gone to a woman.
The English Premier League (EPL) has appointed Susanna Dinnage as its new Chief Executive to succeed Richard Scudamore, who has held the post for 19 years and will be retiring next month.
Dinnage will take up her new appointment at the beginning of next year.
Without a sporting background as such, she comes to the EPL with extensive media and broadcasting experience, coming from the Discovery media organisation, where she was the Global President of the Animal Planet Channel. Prior to that, she was with Channel Five and began her career with MTV.
This experience should serve her well at EPL in the current business climate, where sports broadcasting and digital rights are under increasing commercial pressure and competition.
Dinnage takes on quite an assignment and remarked on her appointment that:
“With the support of clubs and the team, I look forward to extending the success of the league for many years to come.”
Apart from the broadcasting side, she will also have to deal with the effects of ‘Brexit’ on UK football in general and on the EPL in particular.
Scudamore is a difficult act to follow and it will be interesting to see how she measures up to such a challenging and demanding position!
Prof Dr Ian Blackshaw may be contacted by e-mail at ‘This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ’
