The Sports Business Journal’s ranking of the 20 most influential people in online sports starts with Bob Bowman, president and CEO of MLBAM, (more on him below) and ends with Will Leitch, editor of Deadspin.com. The all-male list in between (in order): John Kosner, SVP/GM, new media, ESPN; Steve Snyder, COO, CBS Interactive; Jeff Price, president, SI Digital; Brian Rolapp, VP, media strategy, NFL; Brian Grey, SVP/GM, FoxSports.com; Steve Grimes, Senior director, interactive services, NBA; Dick Glover, VP, broadcasting, new media, NASCAR; Brian Bedol, President & CEO, CSTV; Neal Scarbrough, GM/Editor, AOL Sports; Shannon Terry, CEO, Rivals.com; Bill Simmons, Columnist, ESPN.com; Mark Cuban, Owner, Dallas Mavericks; Scott Bailey, VP/GM, business operations, Turner Sports New Media; Paul Johnson, VP, new media, PGA Tour; Dave Morgan, Executive editor, Yahoo Sports; Keith Ritter, President, NHL Interactive CyberEnterprises (NHL ICE); Claude Ruibal, Chairman & CEO, WCSN; Peter King, Columnist, SI.com.
I’d have ranked Bedol higher; in fact, I don’t agree with the way the top 10 plays out although Bowman clearly belongs in spot #1. The inclusion of Leitch is a kick.
More on Bowman and MLBAM: In an article behind the subscription wall, SBJ looks at MLBAM’s success led by Bowman. The company—described as “starting from literally nothing in 2000” although you hardly can call the combo of MLB’s backing and rights “nothing”—has more than $300 million in annual revenue and earns more than $70 million before taxes and depreciation.
—“MLB.com still lags well behind mass market sports sites such as ESPN.com in raw traffic, according to several macro-level Web measurement agencies. But the key to MLBAM’s massive profile lies in the far-reaching scope of its work, which has industry executives closely watching what they’re doing and looking for hints at what’s next. Bowman has pushed MLB.com into a vast array of content initiatives, ticketing, merchandise sales, fantasy gaming, and a fast-growing portfolio of outside development projects, such as handling e-commerce for the City of New York, online video for the U.S. Figure Skating Association, and perhaps most notably, assisting CBS on its deployment of March Madness on Demand.”
—“Bowman’s next wave of projects includes an effort to boost the quality of MLBAM’s video output through a new cacheing process that will roughly double the picture resolution of the online offerings this season.” That could become even more important if MLB is successful in pushing past a congressional investigation into a deal that would limit out-of-market access to DirecTV and broadband MLB.TV.