Speakers
Tim Brosnan
Executive Vice President, Business
Major League Baseball - mlb.com
President, CEO
Major League Baseball Enterprises
As Executive Vice President (EVP), Business, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Major League Baseball Enterprises, Inc. Tim Brosnan oversees all domestic and international business functions of Major League Baseball’s Office of the Commissioner, including marketing, sales, licensing, sponsorship, domestic and international broadcasting, special events, MLB Productions and community affairs.
Appointed to that position in 2000, Brosnan was given the additional title in 2002 of President, CEO for Major League Baseball Enterprises, the company that holds all the collective businesses of the 30 Major League Clubs. In 2004, he also was named by ownership to develop and launch the Baseball Channel, a planned baseball-only cable network. In 2007 MLB announced that in its first phase of negotiations it had reached carriage agreements for the MLB Network to air in nearly 50 Million homes, making the launch of the network the most successful in television history.
Brosnan spearheads negotiations for all national media rights agreements at MLB and in 2006 struck seven year agreements with FOX Sports and Turner Sports totaling more than $3 Billion. In recent years he has concluded the XM Satellite Radio (eleven years - $650 Million – largest non-television media deal in sports) agreement and MLB’s eight year broadcast rights agreement with ESPN ($2.4 Billion). Total revenues for the businesses Brosnan manages exceeded $1.1 Billion in 2006, with worldwide retail sales exceeding $3BB.
Along with MLB Broadcast Partners, Turner, ESPN and FOX Brosnan has overseen the remaking of Baseball’s broadcasts on a regional and national level. Many of the technical and advertising innovations in the broadcast and cable productions of Baseball have come about under Brosnan’s direction.
In 2006, after many years of planning, Major League Baseball launched the inaugural World Baseball Classic under Brosnan’s direction. The high profile, worldwide tournament’s success cemented baseball’s global appeal.
Brosnan joined the Major League Baseball Commissioner’s Office in 1991 as Vice President of International Business Affairs and was promoted in 1994 to Chief Operating Officer of Major League Baseball International, where he served until 1998. During that time, Major League Baseball broadcast distribution increased from 70 to more than 200 countries worldwide, MLB played its first regular season games outside the U.S. and Canada, and international revenues more than tripled. In 1998, Brosnan was promoted to Senior Vice President, Domestic and International Properties, where he retained his leadership role in all international initiatives while assuming responsibility for all Major League Baseball licensing, sponsorship and special events in the United States and Canada.
In 2007, Brosnan was named by Business Week as the 46th most influential person in the world of sports. Brosnan has been named by The Sporting News for the past eleven years as among the “100 Most Powerful People in Sports.” In 2007 and 2006, Irish America Magazine named him to their annual Business 100, a compilation of the top hundred Irish Americans in business. In 1997, Brandweek named him one of the “Ten Most Wanted” marketing executives under age 40 in the United States.
Prior to joining Major League Baseball, Brosnan was appointed to the New York State Commission on Government Integrity by Governor Mario Cuomo in 1987, and two years later was appointed counsel to the Chairman for that Commission. In 1989, he was selected as a Regional Finalist for the White House Fellowships. He earned a BA from Georgetown University, where he was a four-year player and captain of the baseball team, and a JD from Fordham University School of Law, where he graduated as President of the Student Bar and Commencement Speaker. He began his career practicing law at the firm of Kelley Drye and Warren in New York.
Brosnan currently is a member of the Board of Directors of the Fordham Law Alumni Association and several of its fundraising arms. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Baseball Tomorrow Fund and was appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to serve as a member of the Sports Development Corporation for the City of New York. He recently was named to the Board of Directors of the Partnership for a Drug Free America and the New York Mental Health Association. He is a former member of the New York City Bar Association Sports Law Committee and of the Board of Directors of Fordham Preparatory School. Brosnan is a founder and Board Member of the George Jackson Academy, a private non-profit school for underprivileged, gifted children.
Tim resides in Westchester County with his wife, Claire O’Brien, and their three children, Helen, Kevin and Charlotte.
Ian Rogers
General Manager, Music
Yahoo! Inc. - music.yahoo.com
As General Manager of Yahoo! Music, Ian Rogers leads the continued growth and development of the world’s #1 online music site. Rogers oversees strategy for the site’s products and services such as Yahoo! Music Unlimited and LAUNCHcast Radio as well as key partnerships and original content and programming.
Ian Rogers joined Yahoo! in 2003 with the company’s acquisition of Mediacode. Before joining the Yahoo! team, Rogers was founder, president and CTO of Mediacode, a media software developer. In his role at Yahoo!, he is responsible for the growth and continued development of Yahoo! Music as a compelling, global music destination for consumers, record labels and advertisers.
Rogers has been building digital media applications since 1992. He created the second-ever, music-related Web site and built many of the original promotional sites for the music and movie industry. He was CTO at rVision, one of the first Web design firms until 1998, then was part of Nullsoft, an early leader in the digital music revolution and makers of Winamp, SHOUTcast, and Gnutella. Rogers was the President of New Media for the Beastie Boys' record label and lifestyle brand Grand Royal, where he was responsible for the first same day digital/physical album release.
Since 2003, Rogers has served as Director and then VP of Product Development for Yahoo! Music, overseeing the development of the world's #1 Music Web site, Music.Yahoo.com as well as Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Yahoo!'s unlimited music subscription service.