Champions 2026: Steve Greenberg

Stepping into Steve Greenberg’s office, nine floors above the luxury retail shops of midtown Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, is to step through history.

The wood-paneled room is full of photographs featuring former presidents and Hall of Fame ballplayers. It houses a pair of seats from Comiskey Park and several baseball bats, including one of Greenberg’s from when he played in the minor leagues. His father, MLB Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, stars throughout in photos from his playing days and promotional images from his service in World War II. Greenberg’s mother, Caral Gimbel, was an accomplished equestrian and is featured competing in Paris.

Steve Greenberg’s career is its own walk through the history of sports business. He represented ballplayers at the outset of free agency. He helped secure a key labor agreement as MLB’s deputy commissioner. He launched the sports network that eventually became ESPN Classic. And for more than 20 years at boutique investment bank Allen & Company, Greenberg has served as the sports industry’s go-to adviser on media strategy and team sales, consulting on the rise of regional sports networks and numerous record-setting transactions.

Herbert Allen Jr., the former president and CEO of Allen & Co., hired Greenberg in 2002 with nothing more than an expectation that he’d formalize a sports practice.

“He was just such a good, top-quality guy that having him in the room was worth it, even if he never did anything,” Allen said. “But of course he did an awful lot. I guess he’s done more in sports than anybody in the history of Wall Street.”

Still influential as ever, the 77-year-old Greenberg is currently advising on the sale of the Seattle Seahawks and recently managed ownership transactions for the Portland Trail Blazers and Minnesota Twins. He’s a trusted confidant for league commissioners and team owners alike. Few have played such a critical role in so many industry-defining trends.

And Greenberg says he has no plans to slow down.

“Every time I’ve ever grumbled about going to work, I’ve left. That’s why I left baseball. It wasn’t fun anymore,” Greenberg said. “Every other thing I’ve done … it’s just been about joining the people and everything else falls into place. Money falls into place. Lifestyle falls into place. That’s something that I can’t replicate if I retired, whatever that means.”

FROM PLAYER TO AGENT

Steve Greenberg was born in New York City, but he grew up in Cleveland going to Indians games at Municipal Stadium and possibly not fully appreciating that most kids didn’t have Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams as houseguests.

Born in 1948, the year after Hank hung up his jersey, Greenberg saw his father play in only the occasional old-timers game. Perhaps fittingly, Greenberg’s early memories of his father are as a team executive, serving as part-owner and general manager of the Cleveland Indians and later the Chicago White Sox.

Greenberg also was exposed to business through his mother’s family, which owned department chain Gimbels and subsidiary Saks. He admits he was relieved when the company was sold.

“I would say the fact that Gimbels was sold when I was in college was probably one of the luckiest breaks I ever had,” Greenberg said. “Because I was beginning to feel some pressure, I’ll call it, to go into the business. And that [sale] took that off the table. I am much happier for having chosen the path I chose on the sports side.”

Greenberg was an accomplished athlete at Yale, where he captained the baseball team and earned All-American honors as a soccer goalie. In 1970, he graduated, was married and then drafted by the Washington Senators within two weeks.

But by 1974, after a few years playing minor league ball and with his wife, Myrna, expecting their first child, Greenberg saw the writing on the wall. He applied to law and business schools, at both Yale and in his then-resident Los Angeles. Greenberg graduated from UCLA’s law school in 1977.

Reflecting on his career, Greenberg often returns to the idea of serendipity. Take, for instance, that Greenberg happened to leave baseball for law school right before the start of free agency, first codified in 1976.

“All of a sudden, all my former teammates who were making the minimum salary in the big leagues had the ability to be free agents,” Greenberg said. “So I started getting phone calls. No one had an agent.”

One of his early clients was former roommate and National League batting title winner Bill Madlock; Greenberg negotiated his contract while a second-year law student. Greenberg started building a client base through word of mouth. After getting his law degree, Greenberg landed at Los Angeles law firm now known as Manatt, Phelps & Phillips under sports lawyer Alan Rothenberg, a member of the SBJ Champions class of 2011.

“He had some maturity. More than the typical new lawyer does, because he spent those years at the minors before,” Rothenberg recalled. “He was smart, he knew the industry. He was a very honorable, ethical person.”

“And he was a great mentor,” Rothenberg added.

Greenberg was tasked with overseeing the development of Arn Tellem. The young lawyer had applied for a role at the firm specifically for the chance to work with Greenberg, whose father was Tellem’s childhood idol. Tellem, who refers to Greenberg as “Mr. Perfect,” said he learned from his mentor the value of preparation, and to seek empathy at the negotiating table.

“An important thing was to be able to put myself in the shoes of the other side, and to be able to see the negotiation not just from our perspective, but from the other side’s perspective,” said Tellem, now the vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons and a fellow member of this year’s class of Champions. “That was something that [Greenberg] was really good at.”

In his first week after buying the Chicago White Sox in early 1981, Jerry Reinsdorf met Greenberg at an arbitration hearing for Greenberg’s client, White Sox pitcher Ed Farmer. Reinsdorf’s first impressions of Greenberg: “Very smart, very personable and very tall.”

Reinsdorf also found Greenberg to be exceedingly fair. They never saw the inside of an arbitration hearing again.

“It was very collegial because he was never looking to get the highest number possible. He was always looking to get to the fairest number possible,” Reinsdorf said. “Steve was a delight to deal with because I didn’t have to fight. I’d make my case, he’d make his case and we’d figure it out. If we didn’t agree, we’d end up splitting the difference.”

The two have been friends for years, and Reinsdorf said he even became friendly with Greenberg’s in-laws. The relationship building and negotiating style Greenberg developed as an agent helped carry him throughout the rest of his career. But, by the late 1980s, he’d ultimately grown tired of the repetitious work of representing players.

In another act of serendipity, Greenberg was offered the chance to work at the MLB league office. Per Rothenberg, it was a “fait accompli” that Greenberg would take the job.

“It was not like it was us or them. Steve had grown up, literally, with baseball. To be the right-hand man of the commissioner of Major League Baseball was just a great opportunity for him,” Rothenberg said. “And obviously he flourished.”

LABOR AND LEAGUE GOVERNANCE

Greenberg had graduated from Yale with a degree in English and studied under popular professor Bart Giamatti. The two also had grown close because Giamatti was a baseball diehard and attended every Yale home game.

In the years following Greenberg’s graduation, Giamatti went on to serve as president of Yale and then the National League. He succeeded Peter Ueberroth as commissioner of MLB in 1989. Best known for suspending Pete Rose, Giamatti held baseball’s top job for only five months before he died of a heart attack.

A few days later, Greenberg eerily received a letter from Giamatti. It hinted at a job offer.

“He had written it the day before he died,” Greenberg said. “And the letter said, ‘It was great seeing you in California on my recent trip. I was just talking to [MLB Deputy Commissioner Fay Vincent]. Would you consider moving to New York? I joke not.’”

Greenberg already knew Vincent from the board of trustees of their alma mater Hotchkiss School, the preparatory academy in Connecticut. When Vincent was named as Giamatti’s replacement, he offered Greenberg the role of deputy commissioner. Greenberg began in the job at the start of 1990, with MLB in the middle of intense labor negotiations. A monthlong lockout soon followed.

“Steve was a delight to deal with because I didn’t have to fight. I’d make my case, he’d make his and we’d figure it out. If we didn’t agree, we’d end up splitting the difference.”

—  Jerry Reinsdorf, owner, Chicago White Sox

Greenberg wound up playing a key role in resolving the dispute thanks to his long relationship with MLBPA head Don Fehr, whom Greenberg knew from his years representing players. The two holed up to work through the final hangup in negotiations: eligibility for salary arbitration. League owners wanted players to have three years of service to be eligible for arbitration, while the players’ union was fighting for two. Greenberg, as is often the case, found common ground: The most senior 17% of second-year players would be eligible.

“When you have a relationship with someone, you can cut through a lot of crap,” Greenberg said. “Don realized that, first of all, I was authorized to make a deal. … And he realized I knew what I was talking about, and I knew that his two-year proposal was never going to fly with our guys. There had to be some place in the middle.”

Greenberg also emerged as an efficient problem-solver on issues across finance, legal, licensing and other areas. Vincent tasked Greenberg with managing controversial Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott, and with telling George Steinbrenner he’d be placed on the permanently ineligible list for paying gambler Howard Spira to dig up dirt on star Dave Winfield.

But the labor dispute Greenberg helped resolve was only a temporary solution, with a far larger battle brewing ahead. Knowing that Vincent wouldn’t endure a lengthy work stoppage, the owners pushed him out in 1992. Greenberg soon followed.

“I had no real authority anymore, I was sort of a well-paid traffic cop,” Greenberg recalled. “I just made the decision that that’s not what I came to New York to do.”

Greenberg departed the league office in the spring of 1993, just a year before the strike that cost MLB that year’s World Series and, ultimately, became the longest work stoppage to that point in sports history. Greenberg had another job in baseball waiting for him, at least until his next stroke of serendipity.

MEDIA MAVEN

Greenberg had barely left MLB when New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon called with a job offer.

“He did a great job with baseball. Frankly, at that time, I wanted him to come in and … run the business aspect of the Mets,” Wilpon said. “Maybe if I caught him a couple of years before that, I might have got him. He would’ve been a great addition.”

Greenberg was interested; the Mets were his favorite team as a teenager, and Wilpon was a friend. But while considering the offer, Greenberg was also invited to lunch by Brian Bedol, a television executive with plans to launch a network full of historical sports broadcasts.

The idea had been sparked by Bedol’s work on the business plan for Nickelodeon’s “Nick at Nite” programming, initially comprising syndicated shows that first aired years prior. Bedol knew he was on to something when he witnessed a group of entertainment executives crying at a replay of gymnast Mary Lou Retton’s gold medal win at the 1984 Olympics. He just needed a lawyer.

“I had a friend who told me he had a friend who had a cousin who was a sports rights attorney,” Bedol said. “I had no idea Steve was deputy commissioner of baseball.”

The lunch lasted several hours. Bedol hadn’t planned on having a business partner, but he went home that night knowing he’d found one. He and Greenberg acknowledge today that they had no idea what they were getting themselves into by launching Classic Sports Network.

The partners’ first challenge was to raise seed capital. They struck out time and again until Vincent introduced Greenberg to Herbert Allen. Allen had coincidentally played tennis with Greenberg’s father over the years, and he took a keen interest in the 46-year-old entrepreneur.

“Steve impressed me, and that was about it,” Allen said. “I didn’t know much about classic sports. He was more than willing to tell me, but that wasn’t my interest. My interest was in him.”

Allen wouldn’t even look at a business plan, merely asking that the partners spend his money only on the acquisition of content. He agreed for Allen & Co. to make a $2 million investment.

“And he then said, ‘Call my CFO and tell him where to wire the funds,’” Greenberg remembered. “I said, ‘We don’t have a bank account. I’ll get back to you on that.’”

Bedol also laughs when he remembers that CFO seeking one other piece of information: What percentage of the company would Allen & Co. get for its investment?

“We had a bunch of investors who kept saying, ‘If you have a lead investor, then we will come along.’ When we called these investors back and said Allen & Co. is going to become our lead investor, they of course assumed that Allen & Co. would’ve done due diligence,” Bedol said. “Little did they know that, at the time, Allen & Co.’s CFO is calling to ask, ‘How much did we get for our money?’”

With Allen on board, the partners were able to raise another $4 million within a week. They’d later raise a further $30 million across two rounds from investors including Wayne Huizenga and Warburg Pincus.

“He’s so natural in what he does. It’s almost as if it’s effortless for him to execute. And he has so many friends in business that trust him so thoroughly.”

—  Herbert Allen Jr., former president and CEO, Allen & Co., on hiring Greenberg

Thanks to his time in baseball, Greenberg had a keen understanding of the landscape and was able to license around 200 hours of MLB footage for $500,000. He and Bedol later secured similar deals for the NBA, NHL and NFL, as well as the rights to boxing manager Bill Cayton’s famed library of historical boxing footage.

Still, Greenberg likens running the upstart Classic Sports Network to “being in the middle of a hurricane in the ocean in a rowboat.” The partners had to crisscross the nation selling to small, regional cable operators, to say nothing of fending off Time Warner’s Fred Dressler, who sought to launch a competitor.

But they found success by employing superstar athletes in exchange for equity, and ultimately in finding a buyer in ESPN. The sports media giant had twice declined opportunities to invest in or acquire Classic Sports Network. That changed when The Wall Street Journal reported that ESPN rival Fox was close to buying the business.

ESPN jumped into the fray and ultimately acquired the company in 1997 for $175 million. It had around 6 million subscribers and was generating less than $15 million in revenue between advertising and affiliate fees. Within a year, the newly rebranded ESPN Classic had grown to around 50 million subscribers. Though few at the time had believed in Bedol and Greenberg’s vision for a network of what some derisively called “used sports,” their network became an ESPN mainstay for years and was on the air until 2021.

“[Greenberg] is visionary. He’s good at seeing around corners to what’s next,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman. “Classic was a great example of that.”

Bedol and Greenberg initially stayed on to guide the newly formed ESPN Classic, but Greenberg chafed at the bureaucracy at ESPN. He never visited the network’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., and skipped a training day at Disney World, despite both being required by the company. Bedol recalls Greenberg planning to quit just weeks before they got their final payout.

“Steve is the most patient person in the world, until he isn’t,” Bedol said. “Fortunately, I think I talked him out of [quitting]. We had so much fun together, and I just can’t tell you how much I learned from him.”

A MATTER OF TRUST

Bedol and Greenberg later launched College Sports Television alongside media executive Chris Bevilacqua, but Greenberg, harrowed by his first experience as a cable entrepreneur, took the relatively hands-off role of chairman.

Allen & Co. backed that new initiative, which was eventually acquired by CBS. And when Herbert Allen learned Greenberg wasn’t going to be involved on a day-to-day basis, he offered him a job. As Greenberg recalls it, the proposed role was simple enough: “We’ll give you a desk and a phone, and you’ll figure it out.”

Today, Allen says he knew hiring Greenberg was the right decision almost immediately.

“Just having somebody like that around is a great value. You don’t measure it in dollars and cents; it may come out that way, but it’s not how it begins,” Allen said. “He’s so natural in what he does. It’s almost as if it’s effortless for him to execute. And he has so many friends in business that trust him so thoroughly.”

Greenberg’s first act of business was to mail letters to several dozen contacts to let them know about his new job as an investment banker. His first reply was from Wilpon. Then a 50% owner of the Mets, Wilpon was buying out partner Nelson Doubleday and wanted Greenberg to lead the effort. Wilpon ultimately secured control of the team for $195 million.

Greenberg later consulted with Wilpon on the launch of SNY, the naming-rights deal for Citi Field, a minority capital raise and the sale of the team to Steve Cohen in 2020 for $2.4 billion, then a record value for an MLB team. Late last year, Greenberg helped sell the Wilpon family’s last 5% stake in the Mets. Wilpon said he’s never turned to anyone else on sports deal work.

“Steve was not just a broker. He was a confidant. He still is, to this day, a confidant of mine. If I had anything to do with sports, we would always discuss it,” Wilpon said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t trust him. The commissioners all trust him. He’s that kind of guy. If Steve is working for you on a deal, you’re sure there are no loose lips.”

Those sorts of close relationships proved vital as Greenberg formalized Allen & Co.’s sports practice, among the first to specialize in the industry.

Career investment banker Terry Morris had already been at Allen & Co. for around seven years when Greenberg arrived. He remembers the moment as a signal that the sports industry was turning from mom-and-pop to big business. Morris, who played hockey at Princeton, was excited by the prospect. He and Greenberg immediately clicked, plus his analytical chops were a perfect fit for Greenberg’s sports background and network.

“He had so much experience as an entrepreneur that he really hit the ground running,” Morris said. “There were opportunities for him to help teams and add value immediately.”

In the early going, those opportunities were often focused on local media. Allen & Co. had represented the Nets in the creation of YES Network in 2002, and in 2004 Greenberg helped structure Comcast SportsNet Chicago, a landmark RSN deal for the quartet of Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs and White Sox. Morris says the creation of SNY, the joint venture between the Mets, Comcast and Time Warner that went live two years later in 2006, was a clear turning point for the young sports practice.

“It became obvious that more than just the Mets could do that. Steve had created a unique way of thinking about starting your own network, not in opposition to but in partnership with the media companies,” said Morris, reflecting on the opportunity to develop local media rights for teams across MLB, the NBA and NHL. “There are 90-plus teams that should be, or could be, thinking about the world in the same way that the Mets were thinking about the world, and there was a lot of value to be created.”

Greenberg and Allen & Co. became a go-to resource for teams launching or partnering on regional sports networks. Just within baseball, Greenberg advised on local media deals for the Angels, Brewers, Cardinals, Rays, Tigers and Twins.

“I just know that it seemed like every time a media deal got made, Steve Greenberg was involved,” said Reinsdorf. Former MLB Commissioner Bud Selig noted that Greenberg has long been his first call on anything related to media: “I thought he knew more about the television sports business than any other human being I’d known. That’s true to this day.”

No wonder, then, that former Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany turned to Greenberg when he began pursuing the launch of a conference-specific network.

“If I remember right, I think it was a Comcast guy who said, ‘Whenever you see Steve coming, you need to hold on to your wallet,’” Delany remembered. “Because he’d led a number of important breakthroughs in this area.”

Greenberg worked with the Big Ten to structure its new network, and he led efforts to find a strategic partner that would share both risk and upside with the conference. He struck out with Comcast and Time Warner. After they passed, Greenberg found a willing partner in Fox. Delany said Fox’s commitment was vital to the Big Ten Network’s success.

“I thought if somebody could do this, we could. But I didn’t have the experience to connect all the dots on the distribution side,” Delany said.

But while Greenberg says those media deals “kept the doors open” in his division’s early years, he’s probably best known today as the consigliere tasked with selling the industry’s most valuable teams.

“Steve and Allen & Co. played a really important role in the development of the RSN model. That RSN model fueled a lot of growth in the industry,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said. “They also did great service to the industry in terms of franchise sales and valuations that were significant in terms of asset appreciation.”

Baseball was an early focus, with Greenberg overseeing ownership transactions for the Astros, Braves, Brewers and Reds. He advised on the acquisitions of the Buffalo Bills and Milwaukee Bucks in 2014, and the sale of the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018. Now with nearly 25 years of investment banking experience under his belt, Greenberg and his team at Allen & Co., comprising Morris and Michael Melnitzky, are almost the de facto sell-side advisers for the nation’s most valuable sports teams.

In the last eight years, Greenberg managed the sales of the Mets to Cohen; the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Hoffman family for $1.7 billion; the Carolina Panthers to David Tepper for nearly $2.3 billion; the Brooklyn Nets and Barclays Center to Joe Tsai for $3.3 billion; and the Denver Broncos to a group led by Rob Walton for $4.65 billion. Each of those deals set a transaction value record in its respective league, if not across all sports. The Seahawks are likely next to claim that title.

“There’s a truly, truly amazing thing where he’s an adviser that people view as a principal,” Melnitzky said of his mentor. “Literally, there was a deal where we were selling a team for a record price, and the other side started calling him Uncle Stevie. He was viewed above the fray; he’s viewed as the arbiter, the final voice in the room, even if he’s not representing the other side.”

A little over a decade ago, Greenberg was once again presented with a new job opportunity that would allow him to redirect the course of sports business history. Selig was preparing to step down as MLB’s commissioner, and Greenberg’s reputation, relationships and track record in baseball made him a natural fit for the league’s top job.

But when Selig suggested as much to Greenberg, he didn’t consider it for a second.

“At that point, I’d been at Allen & Co. for a number of years, and I knew this is where I wanted to be and had no interest in doing anything else, whether it was in baseball or otherwise,” Greenberg said. Nearly everyone interviewed for this story, from baseball team owners Reinsdorf and Wilpon to MLB commissioners Selig and Manfred, said Greenberg would have been great at the job. But his disinterest didn’t come as a surprise to those closest to him.

“From lawyer to entrepreneur to investment banker to selling teams and doing media deals, he was never one striving to be in the limelight. He was never driven by the pursuit of money,” Tellem reflected.

Indeed, Greenberg dismisses the notion of his legacy. He remembers listening to Ted Williams recount a “majestic” Hank Greenberg home run, but noted his father wouldn’t reminisce.

“I’ve heard enough about my dad, but my dad was a humble guy. It was not false modesty, because he knew how great he was as a player, but he never talked about it or talked about his legacy,” said Greenberg. “Maybe I learned it from him, but I don’t take myself too seriously. I can put on the senior adviser face when I have to, when it’s helpful to pretend like I’m a serious person, but I don’t think about legacy. Except with my family: Hopefully my kids and grandkids will learn something from me.”