2024 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Mark Lazarus, a Paragon of Sports-Media Excellence By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. Wednesday, December 11, 2024 - 3:27 pm
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Leading up to the 2024 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony on Dec. 17 at the New York Hilton, SVG is profiling the 10 inductees in this year's class. For more information, CLICK HERE.
There aren't many universal truths in the sports business, but here's one for you. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone more respected and trusted and well-liked than Mark Lazarus.
NBC Sports lead announcer Mike Tirico puts it this way: Mark has a really great way of making you feel very important, very significant. That's the quality of a special leader, and that's what Mark is.
During more than three decades in sports media, he has helped shepherd the industry through the changing media landscape as well as being a key player in landmark sports-rights deals as president of sports at two major media companies: Turner Broadcasting and NBCUniversal.
I've met many commissioners and owners of teams, and there's one commonality: everybody loves Mark, says Brian Roberts, chairman/CEO, Comcast. I think Mark is one of those people who let other people give their ideas, show their passion, and thrive under his leadership.
Growing Up: Sports Media Runs Deep in the Lazarus Gene Pool Born on a U.S. Army base in Germany when his father was in the service, Lazarus grew up in a media-minded household in New York City. His father, John, was VP of marketing and sales at ABC Sports during the glory days under Roone Arledge.
The media tradition dates even further back in the Lazarus family. In addition to two uncles who worked in Hollywood, Lazarus's grandfather, Paul, worked in advertising and publicity for Warner Bros. and headed the advertising-publicity department for United Artists. In addition, Lazarus's brothers Peter and Craig are, respectively, EVP of sales for NBC Sports and VP/executive producer of original content and features for ESPN.
My brothers and I always had an interest in media. How could we not growing up in that household? Lazarus recounts. We all looked up to and respected my dad - and continue to today. I learned a lot about the business just looking at how he conducted himself.
While studying political science at Vanderbilt University, he spent his summers learning the business as a vacation relief engineer at ABC. After a year pulling cable for golf, he worked as a boom mic operator on All My Children, a utility on Ryan's Hope, and a camera op for WABC-TV New York's Eyewitness News.
His first job after graduating from college was in the media department at an ad agency, where he learned the nuts and bolts of buying and selling media. After three years there and a short stint as a sales manager for Cablevision and NBC's fledgling SportsChannel joint venture, Lazarus joined Turner Sports in 1990.
Turner Sports on the Rise: Building a Sports-Media Empire in Atlanta One of the original members of Turner's sports-specific sales team, Lazarus served a variety of roles over the next nine years before being named president of Turner Sports in 1999. During his four years in the role, he played an integral role in recruiting one of the most iconic sports-media personalities of all time for Inside the NBA.
When we had our first meeting, says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, I said, I understand our job is to talk about sports, but I want to be able to talk about social issues, too.' He said, Pick the fights that you want to fight.' Him having faith and trust in me really helped me. And I consider him my friend to this day.
In 2003, Lazarus was named president of Turner Entertainment Group, continuing to oversee the company's sports business while also overseeing advertising sales, TBS, TNT, TCM, and truTV, as well as the Turner Animation, Young Adults, & Kids Media unit, including Cartoon Network, Cartoon Network Studios, Adult Swim, and Boomerang.
At Turner, he spearheaded a multitude of major rights deals, including renewing NBA on TNT multiple times and adding Major League Baseball, NASCAR, Wimbledon, and the Open Championship to the company's portfolio. Lazarus also held onto the PGA Championship and expanded TBS's Atlanta Braves coverage nationally.
Cable was a major disruptor of the media landscape in those days, especially sports, where we were vying for high-profile rights, he notes. Between sports and the original programming we launched on the entertainment side, we significantly added to subscriber value and changed the way advertisers looked at us. At the same time, I think, we built a great culture of people that loved working at Turner.
Lazarus left Turner in 2008 and spent two years as president of media and marketing at CSE (Career Sports & Entertainment). Along with company founder Lonnie Cooper, he helped launch a variety of new ventures, including Bounce TV, and advised on major deals, such as NASCAR's rights agreements with NBC Sports and FOX Sports.
Mark has closed so many deals that, in this business, everyone universally respects him, says Greg Hughes, EVP, communications, NBC Sports Group, who arrived at Turner Sports the same year as Lazarus and later joined him at the Peacock.
The Peacock Calls: Lazarus Heads to NBC Sports and Keeps Olympic Torch Ablaze In late 2010, Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Dick Ebersol, then-chairman, NBC Sports, recruited Lazarus to run the cable assets being added to the group as a result of Comcast's buying NBCUniversal, including Versus (later NBC Sports Network), Golf Channel, and NBC Regional Sports Networks. Lazarus started in January 2011 and, when Ebersol abruptly left just four mo
