• NY Sports Journalism, Friday, August 27, 2010 10:37 AM

Barry Janoff chats with John Brody, who recently left Major League Baseball to join the Los Angeles-based Wasserman Media Group, which specializes in sports marketing, sponsorship, naming rights, digital content sales, and athlete representation and endorsement deals, as well as mergers and acquisitions across media and sports industries. Brody intends to build a "world class" business development team and run its sales team globally from New York.

"I have been fortunate enough to have developed extensive relationships with marketers around the world," Brody says. "And I'll take that knowledge and those relationships with me to see if I can try to add value back to them."

Soccer player Landon Donovan is one of Wasserman's clients. Brody sees an opportunity to use Donovan's World Cup goal, which sent the U.S. into the Group of 16, to advance the sport. Comparing it to Bobby Thomson's home run in 1951 -- "the shot heard round the world" - Brody says the goal "transcended U.S. soccer" and "was a huge developmental landmarker for soccer domestically and internationally."

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