{"id":540504,"date":"2026-01-27T13:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/540504\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T13:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T13:13:12","slug":"playfly-hires-mlb-executive-chris-marinak-as-new-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/540504\/","title":{"rendered":"Playfly hires MLB executive Chris Marinak as new president"},"content":{"rendered":"

Playfly Sports has hired longtime MLB executive Chris Marinak to serve as the company\u2019s new president and report directly to CEO Craig Sloan. Marinak, an SBJ Forty Under 40 Hall of Famer<\/a> who spent 17 years in the MLB office, left the league last month<\/a> and most recently served as its chief operations and strategy officer. TurnkeyZRG assisted Playfly with the search.<\/p>\n

Marinak, who will begin his role on March 2 and remain based in N.Y., will have six direct reports at Playfly, including the three main divisions (media; sponsorship; and advisory and services) plus global partnership sales, business development and international business. All commercial units will be under his purview. Asked about what attracted him to Playfly, Marinak talked about the company\u2019s reach, which includes over 250 partners in sports. \u201cI\u2019m not sure there\u2019s another place where I could have this level of impact,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can reach every single basketball, baseball, hockey team. You can have an impact in college, you can have an impact in other professional sports. And to me, that\u2019s just really compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sloan, who has been Playfly CEO for two years, was looking to fill this position as the company continues to be in \u201cbuild mode\u201d after just five years of existence. \u201cIt was pretty clear that we were going to have to be able to add additional executive horsepower,\u201d he said. Playfly will also look to Marinak to bring his vast experience with data to this new role. At MLB, he oversaw fan-facing tech (including MLB.com and MLB.tv), ticketing operations and the creation of the schedule. Now, Marinak sees a lot of opportunity for data solutions at the university level. \u201cWhen Craig and I were talking about the opportunities for Playfly and Playfly\u2019s clients, particularly when you start looking at the college level, that is probably one of the biggest opportunities in sports right now,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Marinak\u2019s MLB duties also encompassed international and special events, including the MLB World Tour and World Baseball Classic. At Playfly, international growth will be a key goal for Marinak as well. \u201cPlayfly already has a great start with their European business,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot we can do to grow that both in Europe and then in other parts of the world. And so that\u2019ll be another area that I think I can really spend a lot of time on trying to develop and build.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playfly Sports has hired longtime MLB executive Chris Marinak to serve as the company\u2019s new president and report…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,71513],"class_list":{"0":"post-540504","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-turnkeyzrg"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115967247392563447","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540504","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540504"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540504\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}