Comcast CEO Brian Roberts recalls Ed Snider as a mentor
As his own father, Ralph Roberts, aged into his 80s and 90s, Comcast Corp. chief executive Brian Roberts said, he found that he and Flyers owner Ed Snider regularly grabbed lunch around town - the Capital Grille on Chestnut, Table 31 in the Comcast Center, and, more recently, the Union League on Broad.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-pmn.s3.amazonaws.com/public/J5ZTG6DQENA2RIAZWLRSIBTDUA.jpg)
As his own father, Ralph Roberts, aged into his 80s and 90s, Comcast Corp. chief executive Brian Roberts said, he found that he and Flyers owner Ed Snider regularly grabbed lunch around town - the Capital Grille on Chestnut, Table 31 in the Comcast Center, and, more recently, the Union League on Broad.
They'd talk sports, media, and life. Roberts, who heads the city's largest publicly traded company, said he trusted Snider as a mentor.
"I came to realize his genius," Roberts said. "Sports was not a hobby for Ed. It was his life."
Roberts recounted his relationship with Snider, 83, on Monday between business meetings in New York and only hours after the Flyers owner died in California after a two-year battle with cancer.
The younger Roberts and Snider had been drawn together in the mid-1990s when Comcast bought the Sixers basketball team and combined it with Snider's Flyers with the idea of launching a regional sports network on cable.
Even though Comcast owned a majority economic interest in the partnership called Comcast Spectacor, Snider - who had previously run the Prism sports-and-movies cable network - held title as managing partner with day-to-day control; his most recent title was chairman. Comcast today owns 76 percent of Comcast Spectacor and Snider owns 24 percent.
Ralph Roberts believed that "if you are going to go into a business, go with an expert," his son said. The Roberts duo ran cable companies, not sports-media businesses. That was Snider's domain.
Snider, who mortgaged his home in the 1960s to acquire the Flyers as an expansion team in Philadelphia, made his fortune with it.
And if the Robertses and Snider didn't get along, the partnership papers contained an out. Either side could walk away after a year.
Not only didn't they divorce as partners, but, Roberts said on Monday, "I never felt the need for Comcast to second-guess his decisions."
Roberts considers Snider the pioneering force for Comcast's stable of highly profitable regional sports networks, including what is now Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia.
Over time, Snider also evolved into a friend.
During their lunches, they talked about business such as Comcast's takeover of NBCUniversal, along with sailing, vacation destinations, and the vagaries of life.
Ralph Roberts died last June at 95. Brian Roberts said that Snider realized "his mortality" with the advance of his cancer and had taken steps for a smooth transition for his "beloved Flyers" and stadium-manager Comcast Spectacor, based in South Philadelphia.
Snider worked closely with Dave Scott, a former Comcast cable executive who is the chief executive of Comcast Spectacor. Other Comcast executives have joined Comcast Spectacor.
But the company, with 3,000 full-timers and 15,000 part-timers, remains largely the house that Snider built. Executive vice president Phil Weinberg, Wells Fargo Center president John Page, and Flyers chief operating officer Shawn Tilger have worked for the company at least 20 years.
No one in the Snider family is involved with the management company, officials said Monday.
"We planned for this," Roberts said, adding that for Snider, "building that [Flyers] franchise was everything."
215-854-5897
@bobfernandez1