Long time Riot Games executive John Knauss has joined GRID Esports as its new executive vice president of gaming solutions. In this new role, Knauss will take the reigns of the company’s game developer data solutions vertical, Gaming Data Solutions, where he will provide “comprehensive esports solutions to manage tournaments, data distribution, monetization, and integrity,” according to the announcement.
Knauss leaves Riot after spending nearly a decade at the company’s Santa Monica, California, offices working in various roles. He first joined the Riot team as an MBA student consultant in 2014 for several months. In June 2015, he took on his first role as an associate product manager. Over the years he served in multiple roles at Riot that involved product management, and in his last role at Riot (senior manager of technical product management) he focused on Riot’s global sports data rights strategy and commercialization, operational esports data infrastructure and distribution, and advanced esports stat development and tools (competitive data programs for League of Legends and Valorant Esports), according to his LinkedIn profile.
“Almost ten years at Riot Games, much of it spent expanding esports data strategy and building data-focused teams, showed over and over the value of leveraging in-game data for powering deeper insights, stronger engagement, and improved sustainability for games,” said Knauss in a release. “Moritz [Maurer, CEO of GRID], myself, and the entire GRID team share a common vision for bringing those industry-leading capabilities to a broader audience of game developers. GRID’s culture, approach to in-game data, and deep focus on creating value for developers, players, and the ecosystem, is a perfect fit, and I’m excited for the future we want to create.”
Knauss joins the GRID North America team, alongside former YouTube Gaming executive Julian Schwartz (VP of business development) and former 100 Thieves Director of Esports Analytics Tim Sevenhuysen (senior business data consultant), who both joined the company earlier this year.