Baseball's Rainmaker Forced Out After Alleged MisconductBob Bowman, long considered one of the most influential executives in media and sports, was pushed out by Major League Baseball after allegations related to his workplace conduct
Major League Baseball forced out the architect of its multibillion-dollar digital-media business last month, after years of troubling workplace behavior that former baseball executives were said to be made aware of at least a decade ago.
Bob Bowman for 17 years led MLB Advanced Media, building it into a powerhouse digital platform that made the otherwise hidebound league the envy of pro sports. BAMTech, a spinoff of MLB Advanced Media, is now majority-owned by Walt Disney Co., which paid $2.58 billion to take control over the last 16 months.
Bowman was one of the most influential people in sports and digital media when MLB announced his departure on Nov. 6, saying he had told commissioner Rob Manfred that he would not seek to renew his contract.
Other forces were at work, people familiar with the situation say. Bowman verbally abused a coworker in October, prompting Manfred to push him out, these people say. That was preceded by a July incident in which Bowman allegedly shoved an executive with the group that owns the Boston Red Sox.
"The culture that started at BAM was hard working and driven. At times, it was also inappropriate and I take full responsibility," Bowman said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. "This inappropriate behavior reflects my personal flaws and not someone else's. This behavior and my personal behavior were wrong. To those who felt the sting of my behavior, I am truly sorry. To my family, friends and business colleagues who have been steadfastly supportive of me, and whom I have embarrassed, I apologize."
Bowman's departure was the end result of a yearslong divide between baseball's staid Park Avenue headquarters and the younger, looser MLB Advanced Media office two miles away that Bowman ran like a fiefdom.
"I would say that (the October) incident was the culmination of a variety of issues that had gone on over a period of time, and it precipitated a conversation in which Bob and I agreed that the best thing for him to do was to leave," Manfred said in an interview.
Bowman's departure capped a tenure riddled with concerns about his workplace conduct.
People familiar with Bowman say he engaged in a pattern of behavior that included propositioning female colleagues, allegedly conducting consensual relationships with subordinate coworkers and cultivating a culture of partying and heavy drinking with employees outside the office.
At least 10 years ago, former MLB president and chief operating officer Bob DuPuy was told of concerns about Bowman's behavior by BAM employees and raised them with former MLB commissioner Bud Selig, according to people familiar with the situation. DuPuy would not comment and referred questions to MLB.
But Bowman remained with the company as it grew increasingly lucrative for team owners.
"What he gave in heartburn was always overshadowed by what he gave in money," said a former high-ranking baseball official. This person said DuPuy raised longstanding concerns about Bowman but, "Bud had no interest in dealing with it."
Selig, who is 83 years old, was named acting MLB commissioner in 1992 and commissioner in 1998. He retired in 2015 and last summer was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Rich Levin, spokesman for Selig, released a statement on his behalf saying, "It is highly inappropriate for the Commissioner Emeritus to publicly discuss any private conversations he has had with former employees."
After the shoving incident at the All-Star Game, according to a person familiar with the matter, Manfred ran into DuPuy at a country club to which they both belong and asked if he previously had any concerns about Bowman's behavior. According to this person, DuPuy replied that there had "been some issues" about 10 years ago.
Manfred, who for years oversaw labor relations from the league office before becoming commissioner in 2015, said he wasn't aware of any alleged relationships Bowman had with coworkers. He said a supervisor becoming involved with a subordinate would have violated MLB's employee policies, but that "I couldn't tell you what BAM's policies were. I wasn't responsible for them."
During the league's All-Star Game week last July in Miami, Bowman allegedly shoved an employee of the Red Sox's parent company. Frank Huckabone, chief revenue officer of Fenway Sports Management, was standing with MLB Advanced Media employees at the time, according to people familiar with the situation. Huckabone did not respond to messages, and a spokeswoman for Fenway Sports Management said Huckabone declined to comment.
Rumors of the incident got back to Manfred. Weeks later he asked Bowman about the incident, according to a person familiar with the situation. Manfred told Bowman that if he did something like that again, he would fire him, these people said.
During the week of the All-Star Game in July 2016 in San Diego, MLB Advanced Media hosted a party at which women were allegedly hired to entertain attendees, according to two people who attended. These people said the women, who arrived at the party by bus, were widely believed by attendees to be escorts. Some of them were heard encouraging attendees to leave to have sex quickly so that they could return to solicit another attendee before the party was over, according to one person who was there.
Manfred said he had no knowledge of the alleged escorts. But he felt MLB Advanced Media's parties were inappropriate and, after the one in 2016, he said, he adopted a policy that MLB Advanced Media would not host any parties independent of the league office.
In its early days of the early 2000s, Bowman led a fast-growing company made up largely of young people. He built an organization that was isolated from the main MLB infrastructure and created its own human resources department that was separate from the league's HR function. He developed a reputation as a brilliant but mercurial boss.
"He would be a holy terror some days," someone familiar with Bowman said. "He would just talk down to people. He was often yelling. Just disrespectful."
In the early 2000s, Bowman was standing with two female subordinates in BAM's offices, a person familiar with Bowman said. To the women's faces and within earshot of other BAM employees, Bowman referred to the women as "c___s."
Under Bowman's leadership, MLB Advanced Media grew into one of baseball's biggest success stories. The company operates MLB's website and popular mobile app as well the league's online streaming service, MLB.tv.
The NHL and WWE have used MLBAM's platform for their own digital efforts. In recent years the technology has grown beyond sports, with its streaming-video service used by HBO, ESPN and Hulu.
Last year, Walt Disney Co. spent $1 billion on a 33% stake of MLB Advanced Media's spinoff company, a content-distribution system called BAMTech. In August, Disney spent another $1.58 billion to raise its share to 75%.
On Nov. 6, three months after that sale, MLB issued a five-paragraph news release saying Bowman would leave the organization.
With the recent sale to Disney, "it is an ideal time for new leadership," Bowman said in the news release.
"I thank Bob for a job well done and wish him the very best," Manfred said in the release.
Already, though, Manfred was taking steps to change the work environment at MLB Advanced Media. To bridge the longstanding culture gap between MLB and MLB Advanced Media, based in a former Nabisco factory in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, MLB plans to combine the two offices. They will move into a unified office space in midtown Manhattan starting in the summer of 2019.
Under Bowman, Manfred said, MLB Advanced Media was "very insular."
On Nov. 15, nine days after Bowman's departure, employees of MLB Advanced Media received an email requiring them to take a 45-minute online-training course on preventing discrimination and harassment. The goal of the training, the email said, was to "provide participants with practical tools for the identification and early intervention of potentially disruptive employee conduct."
The training was mandatory for all full-time and part-time staff and was required to be completed by December 1, 2017, the email said. Manfred said the timing of the email was coincidental, part of his long-term efforts to evaluate and improve baseball's operations.
Bowman served as treasurer of the state of Michigan from 1983-1990 under Democratic Gov. James Blanchard, leaving after Blanchard lost his bid for a third term. After leaving the state, Bowman went to work for ITT Corp., an engineering and manufacturing company, eventually rising to president and chief operating officer.
In 2000, Bowman joined MLB. By 2007, MLB Advanced Media had become the model for everything from live-streaming sports content to ticket sales to news- and stats-driven team websites.
In early 2010 Bowman considered running for governor of Michigan. In mid-February of that year he said he'd decided against it, saying, "for many reasons I am just not able to commit to run at this time," according to the Associated Press.