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Before Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones, there was Ted Turner, the larger-than-life billionaire owner who changed sports
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Ted Turner was a sportsman of all types, a world champion in sailing and a World Series-winning owner in baseball.
Key facts
- He tried to make the 1964 Olympic sailing team, won a world sailing championship in 1971 off the coast of Long Island and skippered the winning entry in the 1977 America’s Cup, the most famous
- He founded the Goodwill Games, born in large part out of his frustration with the U.S. boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and then the Soviets leading a boycott of the 1984 Summer Games
- Turner took over, and the Braves lost 2-1 to the Pittsburgh Pirates to extend their losing streak
- Major League Baseball intervened and put a stop to Turner’s managerial career after that one game, as they had forced Turner to stop putting “Channel” on the back of the jersey of pitcher Andy Messersmith, who wore No
Summary
He famously owned the Atlanta Braves, leveraging his ownership of the TBS superstation to broadcast their games across the country, all while showcasing his outsized personality at a time when many owners stayed behind the scenes. Turner, who died Wednesday, bought the struggling Braves in the 1970s, put the team on his then-tiny TV station and then sold the signal to cable systems nationwide. “He effectively transformed the Braves into a team with a national reach and set the table for ways that local teams have now gained more of a national footprint,” said Travis Vogan, a sports media professor at the University of Iowa.