It has been a rough year. Advertising and sponsorship budgets are tight. Public funding for sports facilities has dried up. Massive sports agencies are unraveling. The dot.com economy is dot.dead.
And yet, bright ideas live on.
With ratings flat for live events, ESPN develops more original programming. When kids and teens turn away from the games of their parents, a skateboarder takes his show into 15,000-seat arenas. A brewer loses the NFL, but acts quickly to line up the teams it wanted while staying within budget. A ballclub that loses an MVP to free agency wins its division.
Thinkers persevered.
In selecting the fourth edition of SportsBusiness Journal's Forty Under 40, we came upon many of them.
They are proof that a bright idea will get you noticed. So will a position of significance with a team or league. Or a place of influence at an agency, an architecture firm, a law firm or a company that entrusts wide tracts of its marketing budget to sports.
Is this a list of the most powerful under-40 executives in sports, or the brightest? Yes. Does it reflect those who have achieved the most or promise the most? Yes.
There is no scoring system here. No formula. We try to produce a list that represents the best of the industry, taken from a cross section of sports and an array of business disciplines.
This year's list includes seven new members of our Forty Under 40 Hall of Fame, which is reserved for those who have been honored three times (see "Hall Of Famers"). They will be inducted during our annual awards presentation at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Friday night.
That ceremony starts the clock ticking on next year's selection process.
We trust that they'll keep the ideas coming.
