Opendorse is closing a leadership chapter.
The NIL technology company announced Tuesday that it has hired Stephen Denton, a long-time tech executive, to serve as its new chief executive officer. He replaces Opendorse co-founder Blake Lawrence, the former University of Nebraska linebacker, who has served as CEO and face of the company since its 2012 launch.
As part of the transition, Lawrence will shift to the role of president of Opendorse’s collegiate operations, while co-founder Adi Kunalic will continue to serve as chief operating officer.
“Most of what we are known for is the collegiate side of our business, so for our college and [NIL] collective customers, nothing changes,” Lawrence told Sportico in a phone interview.
Denton previously served as CEO of Ware2Go, an online fulfillment platform owned by UPS. According to his LinkedIn profile, he left that position in March. Before then, Denton held top jobs at eBay, LinkShare and Rakuten, among elsewhere.
His Opendorse appointment came after a six-month job hunt led by True, the tech-focused executive search firm. The new boss’ long resumé is short on sports, and Lawrence said that he was not personally familiar with Denton prior to the search. But of greatest importance, Lawrence added, is Denton’s expertise in scaling businesses in the tech space.
“This transition enables us to focus our efforts on specific strategic initiatives, ensuring that Opendorse remains at the forefront of our industry,” Kunalic said in a statement.
According to Opendorse, the company’s platform has facilitated over a quarter-billion dollars of NIL activity involving more than 125,000 college athletes.
The change atop Opendorse’s org chart comes at a tumultuous gold rush for college sports, where a handful of the dominant NIL extraction enterprises try to distinguish themselves from the industry’s fledgling prospectors.
In November, Altius Sports Partners, the athletic department consultancy founded by Casey Schwab, was acquired by NewSpring Holdings-backed Underdog & Company. Earlier this year, ASP struck a multiyear partnership with OneTeam focused on college athlete group licensing. Last month, Learfield, the multimedia rights giant, announced that it would expand the use of its it-house NIL platform, Compass—a move that effectively reduced its existing relationship with Opendorse.