SPORTICO: Fanatics Adds Ashford to C-Suite Role as Executive Hiring Spree Continues

Fanatics has hired Orlando Ashford, former executive at Coca-Cola and Motorola, to be the company’s first chief people officer.

Ashford will be one of just six people who report directly to Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin. In the newly created role, he will oversee human resources across the entire Fanatics Holdings portfolio. He will also serve as a strategic advisor to the rest of the Fanatics executive team around diversity, inclusion and equality.

Ashford is the latest in a spree of executive hires for Fanatics, the world’s largest seller of licensed sports merchandise, which is rapidly expanding its business in new directions like NFTs, trading cards and sports betting. So far this year the company has named two new board members, hired a new general counsel and filled multiple C-suite roles for both its collectibles and gaming divisions…