Leah LaPlaca

Leah LaPlaca

Leah Buhl LaPlaca serves as vice president, programming and acquisitions, overseeing the NFL, NBA, and championship golf categories, as well as ESPN’s content rights management group. LaPlaca joined ESPN in 2002 and has advanced within the programming department, being promoted to vice president in 2005. 

LaPlaca has played a significant role in ESPN’s Monday Night Football – the most-watched series in cable television history – since its launch in 2006.  She was instrumental in the eight-year NFL rights agreement that ESPN reached in September 2011. The extension ensures that MNF will remain on ESPN thru 2021 and includes 500 new hours of NFL-themed studio programming each year, broad digital and authentication rights, the annual Pro Bowl telecast and more. 

LaPlaca is the key liaison for ESPN’s year-round NFL programming initiatives and is responsible for maximizing the value of those initiatives across the company’s multimedia assets, including television, Internet, radio, print, broadband and wireless.  Her duties extend to daily interaction with all facets of ESPN’s business: event and studio production, customer marketing and sales, affiliate sales and marketing, consumer marketing, research, legal, communications and finance.  

In June 2010, LaPlaca added oversight of NBA programming to her responsibilities. 

While shepherding the company’s multiplatform efforts into the much-anticipated 2010-11 season, ESPN delivered strong results, including: ESPN and ABC’s highest-rated and most-viewed NBA seasons; the largest audience ever for NBA Christmas Day on ABC and ESPN; and the second most-viewed NBA Finals on ABC since 2004. In her role, she has helped ESPN manage the shortened 2011-12 NBA season due to the lockout. 

Since joining the company, LaPlaca has managed ESPN’s golf programming and its championship golf strategy which includes The Masters, U.S. Open, The Open Championship and Ryder Cup.  She managed the roll-out of ESPN’s inaugural coverage of the Masters Par 3 Contest and first- and second-rounds in 2008, and she played a key role in the company’s extension with The R&A which brought all four rounds of The Open Championship to ESPN in 2010. Most recently, she worked closely with Augusta National in 2011 on ESPN3D’s inaugural telecast of The Masters. 

In prior roles within the company, LaPlaca oversaw ESPN’s soccer, figure skating, and arena football coverage.   In 2005, she was an integral player in ESPN’s successful bid for the rights to FIFA World Cup and FIFA Women’s World Cup events thru 2014. 

Prior to ESPN, LaPlaca spent time as a consultant working with The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where she also earned her MBA.  She has held positions with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce (1997-1999) and was also an intern with Comcast (2000) while in business school. 

Before joining the corporate ranks, LaPlaca was a researcher focusing on the behavior and ecology of chimpanzees.  From 1995-1997 she served as a graduate researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and spent the summer of 1994 at the Kibale Forest National Park in western Uganda.  

LaPlaca graduated summa cum laude in 1995 from Duke University with a bachelor’s degree in primatology and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  The recipient of a National Science Foundation fellowship, LaPlaca earned a master’s degree in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997 and an MBA in strategic management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 2001.  LaPlaca was named to Sports Business Journal’s ‘Forty under 40’ and Multichannel News ‘40 under 40’ in 2011, as well as CableFAX's Most Powerful Women in Cable list in both 2010 and 2011. She is also a current member of Women in Cable & Telecommunications (WICT). 

LaPlaca lives in Farmington, Conn., with her husband and two daughters. 

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