Autism Awareness

Delta Air Lines Monday announced it will become the Official Airline of the New York Yankees beginning in 2009, which will include the private jet category for Delta AirElite Business Jets. Also, as the exclusive sponsor of the Delta Sky360 Suite, the airline will offer Suite holders an opportunity to sample the world-class Delta brand and customer experience. The Suite encompasses...

MLB's blackout map is a confusing caseof overlapping territories. (CLICK TO SEE IN LARGER VIEW)Two months from today, the 2009 regular season for Major League Baseball will get underway, and with it, fans will reach for their remotes (and wallets) to watch out-of-market games via MLB Extra Innings. But, for several recent owners meetings, the topic of restructuring the television...

The NFL Draft on ESPN and ESPN2 this past weekend was the most-viewed in ESPN’s 30-year history of televising the event with 36.7 million people tuned in to at least part of the 15 1/2 hours of NFL Draft coverage.  It was the highest number of total NFL Draft viewers in ESPN history -- an increase of 5% over last year’s 34.8 million and just above the previous high of 36.3 million...

Fitch Ratings affirms the 'A' rating assigned to Major League Baseball's (MLB's) $1.4 billion league-wide revenue-backed securitization facility. The Rating Outlook is Stable. The facility, Major League Baseball Trust, currently consists of the following:--$853 million variable funding notes,--$389 million series-1 term notes;--$125 million series-2 term notes. On...

Tickets.com announced that it has signed a multi-year contract extension with Major League Baseball's Boston Red Sox. With the regular season underway, the seven-time World Series Champions head into 2009 with enhanced ticketing functionality for their fans and their organization. The renewal encompasses Tickets.com products including ProVenueMobile, Tickets@Phone, Primary Ticket...

Many of you are probably familiar with BizOfBaseballDotCom.  That site and others that are part of Business Of Sports Network are run by Maury Brown, who’s also always been helpful when I send him questions and has been appreciative and supportive of my groundbreaking work here at B&C. Maury and his wife learned last year that their youngest son Travis had been diagnosed...

Every once in while, an idea comes along that is so simple and good that you stand back and say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” That was the case a few days ago when a baseball insider informed me that Padres were considering reaching out to repeat season ticket holders by offering up something akin to the frequent-flyer program that the airlines now have. If true, the program...

Not sure how many of the”common fans” this will impact, but Pete Abe has it all outlined at his blog. I will be discussing this, as well as other business of baseball topics, with Maury Brown, president of the Business of Sports Network, tonight. I would like to hear comments from Yankees fans about their thoughts. [...]

The Milwaukee Brewers and FOX Sports Wisconsin have extended their television rights deal, with neither FS Wisconsin or the Brewers saying for how long or what the financial terms are. The extension is surprising in the sense that the Brewers and FS Wisconsin reached their last agreement in 2003, with the deal going through to 2012. As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel...

The Office of the Commissioner of Baseball announced Thursday that Milwaukee Brewers Minor League pitcher Pedro Lambertus has received a 50-game suspension after testing positive for metabolites of Boldenone, a performance-enhancing substance, in violation of the Minor League Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.The suspension of Lambertus is effective immediately. Lambertus is...

Dovetailing off of the Business of Sports Network's Autism Awareness Challenge yesterday (see details here), is this news courtesy of Bugs and Cranks' David Chalk. - Maury Brown The Durham Bulls have teamed up with the North Carolina Autism Society to help create public knowledge and increase the understanding of the autism spectrum by holding Autism Day on May 1 at the Durham...

Matt Vasgersian reaches out and publiclyapologizes for comments made on-the-airThe first studio analyst hire that MLB Network made was that of Matt Vasgersian. As a play-by-play man, he had been with the San Diego Padres, and prior to that, the Milwaukee Brewers. He also was a member of NBC’s 2008 Olympic coverage. But, Monday night, Vasgersian veered into territory that, depending...

Tueday morning, TBS announced (index.php?option=com_content task=view id=2318 Itemid=1)that former MLBers Harold Reynolds and Dennis Eckersley would be joining Ernie Johnson and Cal Ripken, Jr. as part of the TBS MLB All-Star Game Selection Show which will air Sunday, July 6th at 2 p.m. ET. At that time, the starting line-up and reserves for this year's All-Star Game will be announced...

The Stanley Cup Playoffs Conference Quarter-Finals have concluded, and the National Hockey League reports that virtually all key business metrics have continued their strong momentum from the regular season, in spite of challenging economic conditions. During the regular season, the NHL achieved its fourth-consecutive season of record attendance, and that momentum continued. During...