Building the systems
ascending sports run on.
I have spent thirty years learning what content means to people, doing what it takes, sometimes bending the technology, to get it to the people who need it and depend on it. I saw firsthand what an AM radio transmitter did to reunite families during two years living in a conflict zone in northern Nigeria. That's the reason, plain and simple: there are people out there who want the content and can't get it, and that has always struck me as a solvable problem. Rodeo. Table tennis. Equestrian. The stubbornly American corners of English football. Called niche, until you see how much it matters to the people who care. That's not a small audience. It's a devoted one. You start with a model in mind. Then you meet the audience, watch what they actually want, and the model falls apart, the way any theory does once a real person shows up. Thinking your first draft was the whole answer is arrogance, and arrogance is expensive. Respecting the audience isn't layered on top of the strategy. It is the strategy. If something's wrong, the app doesn't work, the stream buffers, someone's grandmother can't figure out how to watch her granddaughter compete in barrel racing on a smartphone, that's not a footnote. That's mine to fix. It always has been.
Where the Capital Is Going
Three ventures, one thesis: underserved sport doesn't have a demand problem, it has a systems problem. That's the kind of thing you notice easily when you also play jazz flute, badly and without apology, and have made peace with it.
Founded with Jeffrey Lee. Registration, capture, data, distribution: the plumbing an ascending sport actually needs, shipped and operated rather than recommended in a deck somebody billed four hours for.
In April 2026, Ascentive took an ownership stake in Horse & Country. In August 2026, it was selected by the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association to rebuild the organization's national membership and horseshow management platform.
"Equestrian is the clearest case I know of a sport whose audience is already inside it. You don't have to manufacture demand. You have to build the system that turns participation into a business." — David Guinan, Co-Founder
As Chief Digital Officer, David created and built Cowboy Channel+, taking it from nothing to a high eight-figure exit in 2024, four years after launch, a live SVOD service for rodeo and western sports that spent years parked in iTunes' top 5 highest-grossing sports apps, right alongside services with actual marketing budgets. The full numbers are further down, in the log.
The international streaming network for equestrian sport, which David also runs day to day. He took the job, by his own account, at the strong and repeated insistence of his horse-jumping daughter, which is either a great origin story or a cautionary tale about letting your kids weigh in on your career.
H&C delivers global streaming coverage of the USEA American Eventing Championships, Carolina International, Stable View Spring Horse Trials, the IHSA National Championships, and Tryon International.
The Reel
Thirty years of work, in three passes.
Launch promo for the service that made rodeo a subscription business.
The league hired us to build American fandom on the ground, around NBC's First Saturday broadcasts.
Eight American Newcastle supporters. One ambush. Documentary short.
Club mascots, one bus, a country to cross.
Chelsea hired us directly. Their American supporters, filmed on their own turf.
Matchday with the New York faithful.
Live Event Campaign
On-air and online work for a McCartney live event. He spent a decade building campaigns around artists before the sports work started.
Two decades of commercial and branded work from the agency he founded.
Building a news channel from nothing, in Abuja.
"Breakdown" (2011)
Simone Leigh & Liz Magic Laser, with mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran. David produced. It lives in the Smithsonian's permanent collection, and has screened at the Guggenheim and the Brooklyn Museum.
Cargo cults in Vanuatu. Headlined the 20th Hot Springs Documentary Festival.
Five channels on gig work, commissioned by FACT Liverpool. Producer and 3D animation.
Narrative feature. Premiered at Rooftop Films; reviewed in the Times and Time Out.
Channel Log
Working backwards from now. Twelve stops, one throughline: build the thing that doesn't exist yet.
Ascentive Capital
Co-Founder & Partner, Product & Strategy · ascentivecapital.com ↗
A technology and strategy firm, co-founded with Jeffrey Lee, that designs, builds, and operates the infrastructure ascending sports run on: registration, capture, data, distribution. Most underserved sports don't have a demand problem. They have a systems problem. Ascentive ships the systems and then runs them.
In April 2026, Ascentive took an ownership stake in Horse & Country, the international equestrian streaming network. It's the clearest version of the firm's thesis: in participation-led sports, the audience and the participant base are the same people. In August 2026, Ascentive was separately selected by the Intercollegiate Horse Shows Association (IHSA) to rebuild the organization's national membership database and horseshow management platform. David also consults for LIV Golf and previously advised the English Premier League and Chelsea FC on U.S. direct-to-consumer strategy.
Horse & Country
President · horseandcountry.tv ↗
Overseeing global strategy, content, and platform growth for the leading destination in equestrian sport and lifestyle, based in London. He took the role, family lobbying included.
H&C provides global streaming coverage of major events including the USEA American Eventing Championships, Carolina International, Stable View Spring Horse Trials, the IHSA National Championships, and Tryon International, the same network Ascentive took a stake in earlier that year.
Major League Table Tennis
General Manager, Table Tennis TV
Building a streaming service from the ground up to give table tennis the visibility and respect it deserves.
The Cowboy Channel
Chief Digital Officer
Created and built Cowboy Channel+ from nothing to over 150,000 paying subscribers in four years. A live SVOD service for rodeo and western sports, streaming 950+ live performances and 5 million hours of content a year, and a regular in iTunes' top 5 highest-grossing sports apps.
The digital department went from a standing start to over $15M in revenue in 2022, then climbed toward $25M the following year. It sold in 2024 for a high eight figures.
iEXCEL, University of Nebraska Medical Center
Master's, Advanced Simulations, XR & Data Visualization
Built a WebRTC zero-latency 360° video communication system for medical hot zones. The problem it solved: a fixed webcam traps a remote physician in one field of view. This let a doctor outside an Ebola containment area look around the room freely and in real time, turning a stationary feed into something closer to presence.
Also produced medical and XR simulation work for Orion Health, South East Community College, and Standard Nutrition.
E.W. Scripps
Director of Digital Media
Formulated digital strategy across mobile, social, and OTT, launching new content verticals that drove digital revenue up more than 150% alongside a 24% increase in the network's user base.
Gotel Africa
General Manager
Hired and led a team of 12 international media professionals to launch an international television and documentary channel in Abuja, Nigeria. Trained a local staff of 180 to meet modern digital-television production standards inside a conflict zone, and directed coverage of the 2015 Nigerian elections.
Arise News
Creative Director / Executive Producer
Shaped brand, packaging, and creative direction for a global diaspora television network. Developed and executive produced Arise Entertainment 360 and Arise Xchange, live daily shows with guests including Bill Clinton, Dan Rather, and Big Daddy Kane. Took the network's social presence from zero to 12 million views.
Polemic Media
Founder / Creative Director
A hybrid production company and advertising agency. Hired by the English Premier League to grow American fandom through on-site fan activations tied to NBC's "First Saturday" EPL broadcast series, and separately engaged by Chelsea Football Club on its own U.S. fan-engagement work. Also produced broadcast and interactive commercial work for Adidas, Viacom, and Sony, and managed on-air and online campaigns for live events with Paul McCartney, the Performa Biennial, the Public Art Fund, and the Armory Show.
Also produced independent documentary and narrative features, including John Frum, He Will Come (Hot Springs Documentary Festival), Freeloader (Rooftop Films, covered by The New York Times and Time Out), and Accidents.
The Interviews
Director, Documentary
A gonzo-journalism documentary on the New York and Los Angeles hip hop scenes. Won Best Documentary at the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival.
MTV Networks
Senior Producer
Worked across MTV's biggest shows and artist campaigns of the era: The Tom Green Show, Beavis & Butt-Head, Celebrity Deathmatch, plus interactive online projects for Radiohead, Britney Spears, U.N.C.L.E., and more. MTV.com became the highest-trafficked site for the 18 to 24 audience.
Word.com
Director of Programming
David's first job out of college, at one of the earliest and most influential online magazines, and it ruled. While there, he produced what's credited as the first online video advertisement. An archive of the original site survives at deadword.com.
David Guinan, born in Philadelphia, is a left-handed only child, the son of professors of obscure subjects, which explains a lot and clarifies nothing. Brooklyn for 20 years, where he learned Brooklyn's unwritten rule: when you have your second child, it kicks you out. Now in Omaha, a father of three, still adjusting to a city where nobody has strong opinions about the L train.
Deep in the weeds on Nelson Pass amplifiers and first-order crossovers, the kind of hobby that sounds impressive until you realize it mostly involves standing very still and listening hard. Ovid, Faulkner, and Norm Macdonald, in no particular order, which is its own kind of confession. Plus Cliff Lee in Game 1 of the 2009 World Series, on a loop that will outlive him.
Crossover Signals
The person behind the work, and where the sports side, the public sector, and the art world overlap, sometimes in ways that make no sense on paper and somehow work anyway.
Judge, SportsPro OTT Awards (3 years running). Moderator and panelist at Streaming Media Connect, Sportico, SportsPro AI, and SportsPro NY/Madrid on subscriber retention and niche-sport strategy, which is a real category of expertise now, apparently. Featured on StreamTime, OTT Retention Zone, and Dan Rayburn's podcast.
The WebRTC hot-zone system above is one thread of a broader run in medical and public-sector XR, including simulation work for Orion Health, South East Community College, and Standard Nutrition, a genuinely unglamorous line of work that happens to matter a great deal.
The iEXCEL master's is above. Also Comparative Literature/Linguistics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Critical Studies, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, an odd enough combination on its own without adding XR to the pile.
A decade producing and shooting for Liz Magic Laser: Service, Bend, the Performa commission I Feel Your Pain. Coverage in the Times, Art Forum, and New York Magazine, plus her turn as featured artist at the Armory Show centennial. None of which, he'll concede, prepared him for rodeo.