Endeavor bets on baseball. The holding formed by the marketing agency WME-IMG and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) has agreed to acquire nine Minor League Baseball (Milb) clubs through the company’s new subsidiary, Diamond Baseball Holdings.
Diamond Baseball Holdings goes on the market with the objective of acquiring nine Minor League Baseball clubs and managing their business: supervising the ticketing, sponsorships, rights of naming, marketing and audiovisual rights, among others.
The company will operate the Triple Affiliates of the New York Yankees (Scranton, Wilkes Barre RailRiders); Chicago Cubs (Iowa Cubs); St. Louis Cardinals (Memphis Redbirds) and Atlanta Braves (Gwinnett Stripers). The company will also acquire all of the other minor league teams of the Braves, as well as a Single A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants and a High-A affiliate of the Yankees.
Endeavor adds Diamond Baseball Holdings to its portfolio of sports companies including UFC and Euroleague
The acquisition is pending approval from the Major League Baseball Professional Development League. (MLB) for its lower league affiliates. Following the agreement, Minor League Baseball will join other company operations as it did with the acquisition of the Euroliga, UFC y Professional Bull Riders.
Diamond Baseball Holdings may become the largest minor league franchise owner following the acquisition of Minor League Baseball clubs. Pat Battle, Chairman of the Board of Endeavor affiliate Learfield, has been named CEO of Diamond Baseball Holdings and Peter Freund as CEO.
“The opportunities to move into a position of owner of a sport so steeped in history are increasingly rare, and we are confident that this will drive significant growth in the segment of sports properties owned by our company,” said Mark Shapiro, President of Endeavor. “As we have done for the UFC, PBR and Euroleague, we see enormous potential to boost these historic clubs using the scale and capabilities of Endeavor,” he added.
