Kevin Lopes is the Vice President of Sports Business Development & Innovation at ESPN, where he leads the ESPN Edge Innovation Center and identifies and evaluates potential revenue-driving third-party opportunities in advanced technology. Recent high-impact examples include innovative experiences such as animated telecasts (NHL Big City Greens Classic, Toy Story Funday Football, Simpsons Funday Football, Dunk The Halls), digital immersive reality, and thoughtful human-centric advances in artificial intelligence. Lopes has been with ESPN for more than 17 years, spending his first 10 years on the programming and acquisitions team where he was responsible for scheduling and operational oversight of WatchESPN & ESPN3, including 15k+ live digital events, digital collegiate acquisitions and esports programming acquisitions and strategy. Lopes also oversaw ESPN Analytics for 3-years, helping to bolster their brand and reposition them as a critical sponsorship generating arm of the company. In 2015, Lopes won a Sports Emmy for his contributions to the ESPN 2015 College Football MegaCast. Prior to ESPN, Lopes worked at the Big East Conference in Providence Rhode Island. He holds a Bachelor’s in Communications from the University of Rhode Island where he serves on the Executive Boards of the Alumni Association and Harrington School of Communications Advisory council.