• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, January 7, 2011

Major League Baseball has tapped a former top ESPN sales executive to oversee sponsorship-generating revenue at the league, a role that also includes working with the 30 teams. Lou Koskovolis becomes senior vice president, corporate sales and marketing, later this month.

Koskovolis had led sponsorship activities for Six Flags Entertainment, which has 19 parks, since 2006. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in sales at ESPN. He worked at Six Flags under former ESPN colleague Mark Shapiro, who left as CEO in May as the company exited from bankruptcy. At MLB, Koskovolis will report to Tim Brosnan, the league's top business executive.

At Six Flags, Koskovolis also headed sponsorship sales for its Dick Clark Productions unit, which includes the Golden Globes, "So You Think You Can Dance?" and the Academy of Country Music Awards.

He had spent 15 years at ESPN, where he rose to executive vice president, customer marketing and sales and worked to integrate sales operations for ESPN with ABC Sports.

Koskovolis stated: "I was very interested in getting back into sports, and I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity than this one."

Happily for him, he won't have to deal with a messy MLB matter with Anheuser-Busch that resulted in a court battle about whether the beer maker would retain an exclusive sponsorship deal. That was settled last month, and A-B is still there.