Entering his 20th season as Brewers owner, Mark Attanasio looks back (and forward) in an exclusive Q&A

PHOENIX – The 2024 Major League Baseball campaign will be a special one for Mark Attanasio.

It was in January 2005 that he and his ownership group took control of the Milwaukee Brewers, meaning this is the 20^th anniversary season since the transaction.

The team, which had fallen on hard times in the years leading up to the change, got back to the playoffs in 2008, nearly advanced to the World Series in 2011 and is now in the midst of a period of unprecedented success in baseball’s smallest market.

The last calendar year was particularly active for the team, which saw a fourth National League Central Division title and second in three years, a fifth postseason appearance in the last seven years, myriad player transactions and a manager change.

Then there was the off-the-field battle to win future financing for American Family Field, which ultimately ended in early December with a deal that will keep the Brewers in Milwaukee through 2050.

The Brewers’ status as the smallest market in MLB presents more than its fair share of challenges, but the team continues to find ways to remain competitive year in and year out.

In an exclusive one-on-one interview with the Journal Sentinel on Thursday, Attanasio discussed these topics and more.

Q: Looking back on your nearly two decades in charge of the Brewers, what makes you the proudest?

Attanasio: We've had the same four points since setting this up in 2005 -- fielding a perennially competitive team, delivering the best fan experience possible, remaining a leader in the community and being an organization where people want to work while they're on the field or the behind the scenes -- so I think probably what I'm most proud of is that we've followed through on all of those pledges. They’ve been at the start of our media guides every year and we’ve followed through on all of them, a true team effort from everybody. We've got something on the order of 250 people in baseball operations, all the people in the front office. We have around 200 players.

Since 2005 we are fourth in the National League in total wins. So, since our first year, we’re behind only the Dodgers, the Cardinals and the Braves. So, if that doesn't define being perennially competitive – it’s maybe always competitive. We talk a lot about playoffs five times in seven years, winning at least 86 games the last six (full) seasons -- only the Astros and the Dodgers have done that. But that's a snapshot.

You go back 19 seasons, from the point that our ownership took control – and ownership is broadly stated, because we have a very supportive group of owners – we had not been to the playoffs since 1982 and we had 11 or 12 losing seasons in a row. I had one of the guys at ESPN Radio that when I did my first press conference said, ‘Well, you won't be so cheery when you've lost for 12 years.’ And I waited until after and said, ‘Well, that is not the plan.’ He scoffed. If I said, ‘Hey, look, we're going to be one of the top five teams in wins over the next 20 years. Everybody would have left me in the room.

And then again, you give credit to the fans. Because the fans come out and therefore help create the fan experience, because it's so electric there. But we continue to improve the ballpark. It's a model public-private partnership. I think that's been reaffirmed by having the $591 million dollars of dedicated community capital to allow the team to stay through the next generation in Wisconsin.

And you think about broadcasting, we've got the Hall of Fame announcer Bob Uecker. Anybody who's worked side by side with him has gone on to great things. And Brian Anderson, we found when he was third string for the San Antonio Spurs and now he's maybe the most prominent multi-sport broadcaster on a national stage. He's everywhere. And, it's really fun to come to the ballpark.

The BCF, which I give an enormous amount of credit to Cecelia Gore for, has become a community foundation that gives grants to over 200 area charities every year and raises a couple of million dollars every year as an endowment. (All told, BCF has generated more than $55 million since Attanasio’s group took over) I think we are a leader in the community now.

So, we’ve followed through on those pledges and I feel really good about that. The commitment everybody has to the organization is very special.

Q: What’s been the most personally gratifying part of owning the Brewers over this span?

Attanasio: Wow. I think of it on two levels. On the family level it’s really something the entire family shares. Dan and Mike are involved with the team now. But the extended family you see every year, it brings us all together.

My dad all those years singing the national anthem was very special to have as a memory. You can't put a price on that, how it brings a family together. Going back to 2011, my niece Grace was probably 11 or something. And when Rickie Weeks was named associate manager, Grace was like, ‘He was always my favorite.’ She was so excited, and she's 24 now, That’s an example of how it brings a family together. And then it's being part of the fabric of the community, broadly speaking. I think a lot about that – it’s a responsibility because you’re a steward for this. The Seligs, Commissioner Selig, were and now it’s our family and at some point, God bless, it'll be another another family that stewards this.

But away from the responsibility, it just makes you feel so good to be a part of a community like we have not only in Milwaukee, but in Wisconsin, where there's such a love for the team and it’s something we can all share. I think it's one of the reasons we were able to prevail with the stadium financing. It’s something that everybody, no matter where you live in the state, no matter your political orientation, it's something that’s a feel-good thing. Obviously, I’m not saying that everybody's a baseball fan. But I think people appreciate that the Brewers are such an important part of the state.

Q: You mentioned your sons and you’ve been vocal in the past about your wish to eventually pass the team onto them. Is that still the plan moving forward?

Attanasio: You know, I'm very superstitious. So, God bless we can follow through on the plan as well as having another family ultimately – I hope that this team stays here for generations. Baseball is important forever. But what I’ve tried to do with them is sort of is mentor them into thinking what it is to be stewards for the sport and not just look at it like it's a place to work, right? It's why they both have pursued things individually in their lives. And, they’re working in what I'll call a true supporting role. Mike, the younger one, more on the business side. And Dan, who’s more creative, is getting steeped in baseball analytics. And both are really good.

I've got a lot on my plate so I'm easily distracted. But by being involved in things they can innovate, they can help get my attention if necessary. I think good communication is critical in all organizations and I’m mindful of the fact that we're remote (in Los Angeles) and we're not on-site. But I try to be a presence. So, that's still the plan and we're set up to do that. They both certainly have the aptitude. To me, it’s also about understanding the culture and having the right sensibilities for not only the organization but for the community, and they've definitely been around.

Q: The Brewers bought the Carolina Mudcats affiliate in October of 2017, unveiled a $60 million renovation of the Maryvale facility in February of 2019 that wasn’t fully completed until 2020 and last month opened a $20 million academy in the Dominican Republic. How important are these types of investments for the organization?

Attanasio: Players are reporting to Maryvale early because facilities are so great, and a lot of them now who live in Arizona come in and work out in the offseason, which is great to have the major-league players working out for the younger players to be around. Yeah, the challenge is when you think about what's the priority – they’re all the priority.

Building a competitive team every year, you've got to have the guys on the field. You have to have the coaching staff and manager that is supporting them, and you have the next wave of players coming up and in order to develop them you need to have the right types of facilities.

We put the Mudcats first in these kinds of investments and that was because for where they sat at that time, they were sort of at an inflection point at High-A for development and we could have control of the stadium and we could improve things to the way we wanted it with cameras and video for instruction -- it was favorable to own something. That was an investment that to this day on an operating basis is a loss, but it is an investment in developing players.

I was struck when I went to the Dominican. We decided to move forward after several stops and starts in both Maryvale and the Dominican Republic. And both had to get built through the COVID period. So, in case I wasn't aware that we were a public-facing business when you have no fans and front-loaded expenses, you have to make decisions. And this was where we had support from our ownership group, from our sponsors, some of whom, in a difficult period, advanced money against contracts so we didn't have to borrow money at really high rates of interest. And then, with the confidence I had with our ownership group, I could say, ‘Look, we're going to press forward, we're not going to stop. We're going to keep building Maryvale, we're going to keep building out the Dominican facility.’

I just remember that I had to make a decision because we could have just said, ‘Look, we have to stop in both cases.’ But having such a broad base of support, I was able to make the difficult decision to move forward. You know, Jackson Chourio two years ago was in our Dominican facility. It's just critical to best develop our players. We were one of the last in each case (to revamp the spring-training facility and build a Latin American complex). But we could look at everybody else's complexes in Arizona and everybody else's complexes in the DR and just take the best of what we saw.

Frankly, it was our baseball people, which was Craig (Counsell) and David (Stearns) and Matt (Arnold). Tyler (Barnes) oversaw how we were structuring what was going to be done there and then Rick (Schlesinger) took care of the budget. Then in the Dominican Republic, Gord Ash just made it his life's passion, and I just kept authorizing the bills that kept escalating. And to this day, in what's a brand-new facility, we're putting improvements into the facility at Maryvale.

And when you see something that’s as special as the facility in the Dominican Republic, I told Gord there were two or three things that were really nice (to consider adding) but we wanted to get it open. But we're going to continue to improve that also.

If you look at old pictures of Miller Park and current pictures of American Family Field, they almost don't look like the same ballpark. But they are. And so, you want to cherish these facilities because the reality is player payroll is critical, but you're paying to have those players perform for that year. The investment in infrastructure lasts for much longer. And so, I've always put a premium on capital spending.

We're doing a number of things in the ballpark right now. And when you compare it with teams that don’t do that, and you compare the facilities of similar vintage, there's no comparison. So the question is, what's the priority? Everything's a priority.

Q: The other big piece is the players. The Brewers have been ahead of the curve in extending young players like Jackson Chourio, Aaron Ashby and Freddy Peralta, but they’ve also had to make the painful decisions to let go popular higher-priced players like Josh Hader and Corbin Burnes. But then the Los Angeles Dodgers spend over $1 billion this past offseason on an already great roster ...

Attanasio: I think in this regard, you know, the West Bend silver lining was being in a small market because from the time I started in 2005 I was very clear that we weren't the Yankees or the Dodgers. I remember the payroll the year before was in the $20s (millions). And I was asked were we going to get to a ‘4’ as in $40 (million). We went to the $30s and we traded for Carlos Lee and I think we got there. So, we've always been steeped in knowing we’ve had to compete smarter, and that's been the discipline.

I think that one of the challenges which we have on Wall Street also, my day job, is how to how to stay ahead of the curve. And it's hard, right? Because there's a lot of copycat approaches to things in all industries, not just Wall Street and baseball. For example, we've managed so far to have the fourth-most wins in 19 years without adopting that paradigm that you have to build it up, overspend and then rebuild.

We had a rebuilding year in 2016. We had a difficult stretch at the end of 2014 and we could have thrown in the towel then. But we had a group of really good players; was that just a bad 30 games? It felt like we should play out that stretch with those players, which unfortunately didn't work early (in 2015).

So, out of the adversity comes the opportunity and we were able to bring Craig in and have him have an entire year where we knew he could just have on-the-job training and then the next year was a rebuild year. So, Craig comes in the first part of 2015 and David comes in the end of 2015 and we set the table for success.

I get asked on panels, ‘What does an owner do?’ There's not that much we can do, actually. We can't pitch, we can’t hit. After Ted Turner managed they won't let us manage. I told Rob Manfred that they should let us all manage for a week because you'd realize how hard it is. He doesn't seem to like that idea. I frankly think it'd be fun. Obviously, the further you get from the field to play, the easier it gets. So, I thought it'd be good for owners to see how hard it is to be down there and make decisions in real time with the clock ticking for replay and everything else.

But in any event, you can set a direction and approach and then you have to really hire key people for each spot. And not just on the field and baseball ops, but in all the fields. And everybody is at the top of their game who works for us. Up and down the organization the fact is we've been able to promote from within consistently. We can bring Pat Murphy in as manager; he had been there for (eight) years. We can bring Charlie Greene up from the minor leagues to the major leagues. A number of internal promotions as opposed to external hires. I think that’s part of our strength. So, you set a tone. We try to have a family tone. We have winning. I don't know what order, if it's family and winning or winning and family. Maybe family and winning. And a commitment to making everybody in everything they do the best they can be.

Q: To say there was a lot going on last year with the Brewers would be an understatement between a manager change, the stadium financing, the playoffs, transactions, building and completing the Dominican academy. Adding to that, you’re also invested in an English soccer team (Norwich City) and most recently professional golf. Taking that all into consideration, what are your time and financial commitments to baseball now compared to prior years?

Attanasio: To start with, the Brewers are clearly the first love. It's also by a wide margin and a large multiple the biggest investment I have. So, everybody should be clear that there's not going to be any distraction from what's going on in Milwaukee. And I think what we've done, including the past year, kind of demonstrates that.

The Brewers have an ownership interest in the soccer club and that can be very lucrative for us. Obviously, there's outside revenue sharing so that could be good for the team. And importantly, each organization has really high-caliber people. When you’re in an ownership position you try to empower people and set a tone and it allows you to leverage your expertise in a time-efficient way. We have information now going between the two clubs; we have a bunch of executives from Norwich coming over here and learning from us the first week in June after their season's over. And likewise, we've done a lot of learning from them.

English football is ahead of the curve when it comes to training. You know, the guys on the soccer pitch run four miles a game. Our guys will get tired jogging down to first base (laughs). So yeah, there's a lot of training methods that we've seen over there that we're employing here. And so, the sharing of information between the leagues is useful and I think seeing how they approach other things in a sport is useful for me in some of the discussions I have with committees in Major League Baseball. I'm very respectful of how hard it is to run a sports organization anywhere. We've talked a lot about the 19 seasons here. We're really focused on season No. 20.

We had to make a hard decision on Corbin Burnes. Matt and his group have generated an enormous amount of information and make strong recommendations on things. They're not weak of heart. And we expect to be quite competitive this year.

Q: Bob Uecker recently turned 90. Do you have a sense of how much longer he’ll call games on the radio? It’s tough to think of a time where he won’t be doing so.

Attanasio: Uke always says that he'll know when he can’t do it at the top of his game anymore. I'll say when he ended the season his voice was as strong as ever. You walk through the ballpark and we pipe him in instead of the television broadcast. He’ll know when he can’t continue to deliver Hall of Fame performances, and we'll respect that. When he feels he can't we'll say ‘no mas.’ But until then, I cherish every game I get to listen to that he speaks.

By the way, I have been on him. ‘You could take it a little easier.’ You know, he doesn't have to do the day game after the night game. ‘We can get you a driver.’ But he gets in his Corvette and drives home after the game. ‘We can help you with this.’ And you can imagine the response. It’s a pretty flat, ‘No.’ He has so much to add. He’s good friends with everybody, past and present players. And so, I'm expecting to see him out there opening day.

Q: Speaking of broadcasting, there is a lot of uncertainty throughout baseball regarding teams’ TV deals. Can you shed any light on what you expect for Brewers TV broadcasts after this season?

Attanasio: There's obviously been a sea change in the industry -- the tide has shifted and we can't fight the tide. Linear broadcasting is eroding. Things went pretty much from over-the-air, local channels to cable, then satellite. In some cases now you see some over the air -- especially NBA teams are trying that out – but that’s not a long-term solution. So, all the sports leagues are grappling with that. Even the behemoth, the NFL, they’ve been very public in their surprise. ESPN and Fox and Discovery came together to put a streaming platform together. And so, we are doing a lot of work at the league level.

I'm on a committee that's really at the forefront of trying to think through where things are going and how to take advantage of it. I would say the opportunity is going to come out of the adversity here. This is going to be a difficult period, for sure. But there'll be winners and losers in the new paradigm. And I think it's critical that MLB is a winner. There's no reason it shouldn't be; we have by far the most content of any league, right? Thirty teams times 162 is 2,430 games. The NFL has like 10% of that.

So, we have a built-in natural advantage versus all the sports in the amount of content we can deliver. We've been delivering it in terms of maximizing the size of the pie. We've been delivering it in what used to be an efficient way, market by market. That's now inefficient because instead of having 30 teams trying to sell 162 games in their local areas you can have one entity which can bargain as one that looks to move 2,430 games. It’s a macro comment. But obviously, linear is eroding at different rates. Interestingly, (the Brewers’) contract by comparison has held its strength and we're getting paid still this year. Others are getting kicked out of Diamond Sports or are seeing their own RSN linears eroding.

But the execution of something like I'm talking about is more difficult than making a Swiss watch. So, that change is coming and it’s out of our hands. The problem is there and we as a group are pulling together to address it. And that's kind of eclipsed the usual ‘big market wants this, small market wants this.’ Almost everybody has a problem. There's a few who don't, but almost everybody does.

Q: And finally, Giannis Antetokounmpo has been part of the ownership group now for about the last 2 ½ years. How has the relationship evolved over that span of time?

Attanasio: He’s very, very focused, has first-hand knowledge of his investments and is engaged and involved. We’re thrilled to have him in the mix.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 2024 Q&A with Milwaukee Brewers principal owner Mark Attanasio