Higdon currently serves as Global Head of Communications, Esports for Riot Games, publisher of League of Legends, the world\u2019s most popular esport, as well as VALORANT Esports. He joined Riot in 2018 to amplify storytelling around LoL Esports\u2019 global events (World Championship, Mid-Season Invitational, and All-Star Event) as well as its 12 global leagues, teams, players, and partners such as Mastercard, Verizon, Spotify, State Farm, and Red Bull. The 2020 League of Legends World Championship brought in record-breaking viewershiop (23.04 million AMA, 45.95 PCU), earned media coverage (3,300+ global stories), and multiple industry awards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Higdon has served in global leadership roles for a number of sports organizations including Riot Games (esports), LPGA Tour (women\u2019s golf), ATP Tour (men\u2019s tennis), NASCAR (stock car racing), and Champ Car World Series (open-wheel racing). As NASCAR Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications, Higdon developed strategic initiatives for the motorsports series and led organization-wide business development projects. NASCAR was honored with the 2015 PRWeek \u201cIn-House PR Team of the Year.\u201d His move into sports business followed more than a decade working as a journalist, highlighted by his coverage of the NBA, MLB, NFL, NHL, Track & Field, and other sports for The New York Times , The Runner, and ESPN The Magazine .<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In November 2015, Higdon was named Advisory Board Chair at the University of Oregon\u2019s Warsaw Sports Marketing Center of the University\u2019s Lundquist College of Business, and now serves as Chair Emeritus. The Board includes executives from NIKE, T-Mobile, LA2028, adidas, ESPN, FOX Sports, Wasserman, and the WTA Tour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Higdon currently serves as Global Head of Communications, Esports for Riot Games, publisher of League of Legends, the world\u2019s most popular esport, as well as VALORANT [\u2026]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-esportfs","category-speakers-2021"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3056,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions\/3056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.education.miami.edu\/miamisportconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}