Curtis Friends is Vice President, Sports Marketing.
In his role, Curtis leads marketing for College Football, the College Football Playoff and College GameDay, the NFL and NFL Network, the UFL, and the NBA. His team builds campaigns that connect with every kind of sports fan and drive viewership of ESPN’s biggest events.
Curtis joined ESPN in 2017 as SportsCenter brand director and soon moved to live sports, where he launched UFC on ESPN+. He led marketing in the negotiations for ESPN’s exclusive NFL Draft rights and Disney’s NFL rights package, which includes ESPN’s first two Super Bowls, as well as the new NBA agreement anchored by the NBA Finals. He branded and launched ESPN’s new exclusive SEC package, and guided marketing through SEC expansion with Texas and Oklahoma and the expansion of the College Football Playoff.
Friends and his team work where sports and music culture meet, and they use ESPN’s biggest stages to bring artists to sports fans. Their work includes premiering Travis Scott’s “4X4” video on top of Mercedes-Benz Stadium at the 2025 CFP National Championship, featuring Pharrell in ESPN’s NBA campaign, making FERG the voice and sound of NBA on ESPN tip off, and creating original music for the College Football Playoff. Billboard named Curtis a 2026 Sports & Music Power Player.
Before ESPN, Curtis was a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, OH, where he led the first campaigns in Head & Shoulders’ iconic partnership with Troy Polamalu. He later held P&L responsibility for Wella Professionals in Los Angeles, CA.
An Atlanta native, Curtis graduated from Morehouse College with a double major in business management and Spanish, and earned his MBA from Georgia Tech. He and his wife are raising three elite national level swimmers in New Jersey.
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