MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, as part of the ongoing owners meeting in Chicago, interviewed MLB President of Business & Media Bob Bowman in front of club owners about the growth of BAM Tech, the portion of MLBAM servicing third-party programmers and recently boosted by a large-scale deal to manage most of the NHL’s in-house media assets. The session went for roughly an hour, with Manfred’s Q&A session with Bowman supplemented by numerous queries from individual team owners. Yankees Managing General Partner & co-Chair Hal Steinbrenner said of BAM Tech's growth, "They’ve done a great job of building that company up. They certainly have competitors when it comes to streaming, the technology and all that, but they’ve done a lot outside of baseball, too. They’ve got a lot of deals outside of baseball." Steinbrenner, meanwhile, added that he has felt no relief that the Dodgers have far supplanted his team as the sport’s foremost spenders on player payroll, easing years of media and industry scrutiny on the Yankees. “It never bothered me that people talked about us when we were in that position,” Steinbrenner said. “I think what bothered me more was that we were in that position, and I have always felt and still feel that you don’t have to be in that position to win world championships. Now that we’ve got all this young talent that’s very close, some of whom are here, I think it’s going to make it easier to do things with the payroll in the years to come."
