Gary Neville’s sports prodco Buzz 16 promotes trio of execs, adds finance director

L-R: Tom Robinson, Deepa Popat (Buzz 16’s new HR Manager), Mark Mountain, India Opie Meres, Dan Self and Carina Filiali

UK sports specialist prodco Buzz 16, co-founded by former Manchester United footballer Gary Neville, has upped three of its executives to newly created head of content, production and creative and post-production roles while adding a finance director.

Executive producer Tom Robinson has been promoted to head of content. He joined Buzz 16 as a senior producer soon after it was launched in 2017, having spent eight years at Sky Sports.

Production exec Carina Filiali becomes head of production, having been with the company for a year-and-a-half. With a background in live and non-live sports content, she will work on expanding Buzz 16’s factual entertainment portfolio.

Dan Self is now head of creative and post-production. He arrived at Buzz 16 in 2022 as senior creative producer after 22 years with Sky Sports, where he was responsible for the creative output across all Premier League football coverage and directing multi-camera shoots.

All three will continue to work with CEO and co-founder Scott Melvin and MD Duncan East, as well as head of development India Opie Meres, to build Buzz 16’s slate across live programming, podcasts and branded content.

Mark Mountain, former finance director of IMG, has already started in his new role as finance director at Buzz 16 and reports to Melvin and East.

Set up by Melvin and Neville, Buzz 16 is part of Miroma Group. Its growth over the past six years has seen the company expand to a staff of 54 and recently move into larger offices.

Its slate includes the recently announced 99, a coproduction with David Beckham’s Studio 99 and Ventureland for Amazon’s Prime Video, while the firm has also been behind Micah Richards: Tackling Racism, Class of ’92: Full Time, Playing with Pride and YouTube series The Overlap, fronted by Neville.

The latter has been commissioned to a four-part series, currently being filmed for Sky Max in the UK.