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
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
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
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
2024 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Mark Lazarus, a Paragon of Sports-Media Excellence By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S. 
