Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries

Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution

â€œProvocativeâ€¦terrific storiesâ€ (The New Yorker) of the people who transformed sportsâ€”in the span of a single generationâ€”from a job that required even top athletes to work in the off-season to make ends meet into a massive global business.

It started, as most business deals do, with a handshake. In 1960, a Cleveland lawyer named Mark McCormack convinced a golfer named Arnold Palmer to sign with him. McCormack simply believed that the best athletes had more commercial value than they were being paid forâ€”and he was right. Within a few years, he raised Palmerâ€™s annual income from $5,000 to $500,000, and forever changed the landscape of the sports industry, transforming it from a form of entertainment to a profitable and fully functioning system of its own.

â€œA remarkable sagaâ€¦filled with insights not only into sports, but also into human natureâ€ (The Dallas Morning News), Players features landmark moments, including the multiyear battle to free Palmer from a bad deal with the Wilson Sporting Goods Company; the 1973 Wimbledon boycott, when eighty-one of the top tennis players in the world protested the suspension of Nikola Pilic; baseball pitcher Catfish Hunterâ€™s battle to become MLBâ€™s first free agent; and how NFL executives transformed pro football from a commercial dud to the greatest show on earth.

â€œAn entertaining, illuminating readâ€ (New York Journal of Books), Players is a riveting, fly-on-the-wall account of the rise and creation of the modern sports world, and the people who made it happen. â€œNo part of the media and entertainment industry has seen a more substantial economic transformation than sportsâ€¦.A half-century tour spanning a variety of widely recognized and lesser-known sports figures and competitions that have played roles in the industryâ€™s developmentâ€¦.Players could not be more timelyâ€ (The New York Times).
Country USA
Manufacturer Simon & Schuster
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2016-04-26
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Simon & Schuster
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2016-04-26
Format	Kindle eBook

Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution

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