Bob Bowman Giving Up Daily Role at Baseball Spinoff BAMTech

(Bloomberg) -- Bob Bowman will step back from his role running BAMTech, the video-streaming company owned by Major League Baseball and the Walt Disney Co, according to people familiar with the situation.

He will remain at MLB, where he oversees the Advanced Media subsidiary. Bowman created BAMTech, grew it into a $3.5 billion business and continued to run it after it was spun off last year.

Bowman decided to step down, one of the people said. He will remain on the board, and there’s no specific date for a leadership changeover. Bowman declined to comment through an MLB Advanced Media spokesman.

The search firm Egon Zehnder has been retained to find a CEO, BAMTech said. Disney has already begun interviewing candidates, a person familiar with the process said.

Disney said in August it was acquiring a one-third stake in BAMTech and valued the business at about $3.5 billion. The deal underscores the importance of the video-streaming business to the future of Disney’s ESPN, which has been losing subscribers and advertising dollars. Disney in four years will have an option to buy an additional 33 percent stake in the company.

Bowman has been president and CEO of MLB’s Advanced Media since the creation of the 16-year-old unit that supplies content to Internet and mobile subscribers.

The National Hockey League has about a 7 percent stake in BAMTech, which handles the technology for HBO Now, WWE Network and other companies.

To contact the reporter on this story: Scott Soshnick in New York at ssoshnick@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Janet Paskin at jpaskin@bloomberg.net, Lisa Wolfson