VINCE GENNARO

Vince Gennaro is the author of Diamond Dollars: The Economics of Winning in Baseball and a consultant to Major League Baseball teams. He is Associate Dean and Clinical Associate Professor at the NYU Preston Robert Tisch Institute for Global Sport, a global leader in sports business education.

He is the host of a weekly radio show on SiriusXM, Behind the Numbers: Baseball SABR-Style and appears regularly on MLB Network's studio shows such as Clubhouse Confidential and MLB Now, sharing his insights about the game with a focus on baseball analytics. Vince is also the former President of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and the architect of the Diamond Dollars Case Competition series, which brings together students and MLB team and league executives and serves as a unique learning experiene, as well as a networking opportunity for aspiring sports executives.

This follows a successful business career, which is highlighted by a 20-year career at PepsiCo, and ownership of a pro sports franchise.

At PepsiCo, Vince was President of Pepsi's Fountain Beverage Division, and was genral manager of a billion dollar bottling business, in addition to holding senior positions in marketing, sales and operations at both Frito-Lay and Pepsi. At Frito-Lay, Vince led the Doritos brand, leading the national launch of Cool Ranch Doritos, and managed the Jay Leno advertising campaign.

An entrepreneurial startup endeavor early in Vince's career complements his success with a blue chip Fortune 50 company.  At the age of 27, he raised capital, led the purchase of a franchise in the Women's Pro Basketball League-the forerunner of today's WNBA-and served as its President and General Manager.

Vince's innovative statistical analysis of baseball-ranging from player evaluation and the development of new metrics, to placing a dollar value on players-has been the subject of articles in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and CNN Money. He has also written for Yahoo! Sports and contributed to The Wall Street Journal. He is a frequent guest commentator in the media on sports business topics, appearing on MLB Network, the YES Network, CNBC and Bloomberg TV, WFAN radio in NYC, and many other broadcast outlets.

His interest in baseball analytics began at an early age. While a graduate student at The University of Chicago, Vince developed a methodology to measure the dollar value of one of baseball's earliest "big money" free agent's, Catfish Hunter. The New York Yankees signed Hunter to a five-year deal valued at over $3 million. By developing models to estimate Hunter's impact on Yankee performance and the impact of the team's on-field performance on attendance and revenue, he was able to estimate the future Hall of Famer's performance value. By measuring the attendance differential at games pitched by Hunter and statistically adjusting for other factors such as the opponent, day of week, time of year, the competitiveness of the Yankees and even the weather, Gennaro was able to estimate Hunter's attendance value. He concluded that the combination of Hunter's performance value and attendance value justified his then lofty contract.

In March of 1979, The Sporting News was intrigued with Gennaro's Player Valuation system, which evolved out of the Catfish Hunter study, and wrote an article entitled, “New Rating System Puts $ on Player's Value”. Gennaro put aside his baseball analytics work to become a women's pro basketball entrepreneur and then later an executive at PepsiCo, but returned to his passion--baseball analytics--to form the foundation of his second career. His unique combination of high-level corporate success, entrepreneurial experiences and his groundbreaking work in contemporary baseball analysis make him a frequent speaker at a wide range of events, including guest lecturer at various universities, sports conferences, and corporate events.

Vince serves on the Advisory Board of The Perfect Game Foundation and is the former Chair of the Board of Directors of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR). He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and resides in Purchase, NY.