Leisuredb names rich watts as chief digital officer to lead “next chapter”

Leisure DB, the UK’s leading independent data specialist for the fitness and leisure sector, has appointed Rich Watts as Chief Digital Officer (CDO), effective immediately.

Watts joins Leisure DB at what the company calls a “defining moment” for the sector it serves. Over the next 12 months, the business is transforming how three decades of proprietary leisure sector data is delivered to its customers — moving from traditional, manual research delivery toward an automated, web-first, AI-enabled platform.

Watts will be tasked with engineering and deploying that platform, and for the digital evolution of the wider business across data, research and consulting.

Watts brings more than 25 years of experience leading teams that transform businesses through technology, with senior product and digital leadership roles across global brands in Financial Services, Professional Services, SaaS, Healthcare and Leisure. His appointment reflects the scale of the company’s ambition: to make sectorgrade intelligence as accessible and as fast as the environments customers already work in elsewhere.

“The opportunity here is significant,” Watts said.

“Through global data partnerships — and by applying AI to one of the richest proprietary archives in the sector — Leisure DB can serve both ends of the leisure and wellbeing economy at once. By that we mean the macro view that investors, policymakers and capital partners need to allocate intelligently, as well as the micro view operators and suppliers rely on to make daily decisions about sites, members and programmes.”