Dan Margulis is the senior director of programming and acquisitions, overseeing ESPN’s men’s and women’s college basketball programming, including the ever-evolving NCAA Women’s Tournament. He also handles the day-to-day relationships with the both the Big 12 Conference and American Athletic Conference, as well as leading the company’s efforts in high school sports. Margulis leads strategy for all college basketball and high school sports content.

Previously, Margulis oversaw ESPN’s relationship with the NCAA and led the strategy for the Olympic college sports/high school sports content on linear and ESPN’s direct-to-consumer platform, ESPN+. During his time in this role, Margulis expanded the scope of numerous NCAA Championships, including gymnastics, volleyball, men’s/women’s college world series and the FCS Championship. Margulis worked to expand the number of linear windows for both the regular season and championships, with many of the championship events landing on ABC/ESPN. He also handled the long-form negotiations and day-to-day relationships with all conferences at the Mid-Major and below level and led the way with the NCAA negotiation. Margulis also managed all programming strategy for ESPN’s relationship with the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) and National Lacrosse League (NLL), in addition to Athletes Unlimited and the League One Volleyball.

Margulis has previously held the roles of senior director of content strategy and scheduling and senior director of college sports programming, overseeing the scheduling strategy for all studio and event programming associated with the launch of SEC Network, as well as more than 1,000 hours of original content and 800 events annually on ESPNU.

Margulis first joined ESPN as an intern in the programming department. In 1994, he was named programming associate and held various programming positions for the next five years. He moved to ABC Sports in 1999 to handle the broadcast schedules of college football, Little League, figure skating, the NHL and soccer as the director of sports programming.

From 2001 to 2003, Margulis worked as director of programming at the YES Network where he was instrumental in scheduling and developing original programming around the network’s launch. In 2003, he was hired by the NFL Network as director of programming and acquisitions from 2003-06 to assist in the launch of their new network and oversee the programming schedule. He returned to ESPN in 2006.

A 1992 graduate of Amherst College with a degree in English, Margulis served as sports director of the school’s radio station, WAMH, where he also handled play-by-play for Amherst football and basketball, and hosted a Sunday night talk show. While at Amherst, he played water polo and was co-captain of the team. In 1993, he received his master’s degree in sports management from the University of Massachusetts.

Margulis is a native of Needham, Mass. and is based in ESPN’s Charlotte, N.C. studios.