50 most influential
Sports Business Journal has released its annual 50 Most Influential in Sports Business list. Your top baseball guy is, no surprise, Bud Selig at number 6. Part of the comment on Selig: “While he’ll never be fully appreciated or beloved by the public, Selig remains highly popular with club owners and fully secure and effective in his position.”
Which is absolutely right, no matter what anyone else says about him.
According to the +- in the arrows, whoever was number 1 last year, is not on the list.
Selig has been smart enough to hire some great help also. DuPuy, Brosnan & Bowman have all been very effective. We’ll see how Petiti ( I know that is misspelled, is mispelled, misspelled? ) does, I think we all expect ok.
Of course Selig is popular with the owners – he is a former owner, selected by owners to do their bidding. He’s like Mr. Burns ruling over the Stonecutters.
Last year, the list’s #1 was Brian Roberts, Chairman and CEO of Comcast. At the time, I think Comcast was fighting the NFL and other cable providers over the NFL Network. On this year’s list, the top Comcast official is #10, David Cohen, their EVP.
Whatever happened with the NFL network tiff?
@ Chip.
Nothing has been resolved, TWC & Comcast continue to battle with the NFL over carriage of the NFL Network. By comparison, MLB Channel will DEBUT in 8 million more homes than NFL Network and NFL Network is several ( I won’t look it up ) years old.
The NFL has the FCC involved, big cable fears govt involvement in the dispute, they fear it might contribute to the imposition of ” a la carte ” programming. “
PS. And if you see Alren Specter’s name associated with this ( as you often do ) remember that he is doing PA based Comcast’s bidding on Capitol Hill.