ESPN AdSales Platform & Design System

ESPN's internal advertising sales platform was handling millions in ad inventory across digital and broadcast properties, but the tools used to manage it were fragmented, inconsistent, and slow. Sales teams were navigating between disconnected systems, manually reconciling data, and relying on tribal knowledge to operate tools that should have been intuitive. The Bottom Line content management system — used to manage the real-time sports scores seen by millions — had similar usability issues with high error risk.

The AdSales platform required managing complex relationships between inventory, campaigns, clients, and contracts — all with time-sensitive dependencies. I redesigned the information architecture around the sales workflow rather than the data model, surfacing the right information at the right point in the sales process. For Bottom Line, I simplified the CMS to reduce cognitive overhead during high-pressure live events, where speed and accuracy were equally critical.