Career Highlights

Mr. Cohen was named to the board of directors of MSG Sports (NYSE: MSGS) in 2020, marking a return to his professional roots at MSG, where he began his career 50 years earlier.

Regional Sports Networks are the foundation of sports coverage in the United States and Joseph M. Cohen has been a groundbreaking pioneer and technology innovator in the industry.

Mr. Cohen brought his RSN vision to bear with the creation of Madison Square Garden Network, USA Network, Z Channel (California), which became SportsChannel LA, and SportsTime Ohio.

Mr. Cohen’s influence from coast to coast in the sports world spans more than 50 years from 1970 to the present. His touch has created and revived companies and organizations in television, cable, radio, arena operations, arena development and management, and professional sports franchises.

As founder and principle architect of MSGN and co-founder of USA Network, in the late 1970s while with USA, Mr. Cohen engineered the first national cable deals with MLB, the NBA and the NHL. In 1998, Mr. Cohen successfully integrated Fox Sports New York into MSGN, giving MSG Network control of Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Nets, Devils, Islanders and Rangers telecasts, and successfully negotiated and maintained those relationships. In his career, Mr. Cohen also has successfully negotiated rights deals with the following: Cleveland Browns and Indians, Washington Capitals and Wizards, and MLB, the NBA and NHL.

Mr. Cohen organized investment partnerships to expand and diversify the services of Hughes Television Network. HTN has serviced from its inception such regional entities as YES Network, MSGN, NESN, MASN, Altitude Sports & Entertainment (Denver) and SportsTime Ohio. Mr. Cohen acquired and sold HTN three times, each time at a significantly greater profit.

In 2016, Mr. Cohen was honored in April with Jeremy Jacobs, Bob Lanier, Roger Penske, Jerry Richardson and Lesley Visser as a member of Sports Business Journal’s Champions Class of 2016 and, in December, he was inducted with Andrea Berry, Verne Lundquist, Tim McCarver, Sean McManus, Bob Mikkelson, Robin Roberts, Dan Rooney, Craig Sager and Bill Webb into the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. In 2019, he was inducted into the Legacy Wing of the WWE Hall of Fame.

In fall 2000, Mr. Cohen was charged with the responsibility of developing a new, state-of-the-art Madison Square Garden arena and entertainment complex and practice facility for the Rangers, Knicks and Liberty.

Mr. Cohen served as chairman of the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings from 1993-95 and helped guide the club through some perilous times in the wake of a financial crisis.

Mr. Cohen served on the television committees for both the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League. He helped negotiate the NHL’s contract with ESPN in the late 1980s.

From 1979-85, Mr. Cohen served as president of MSG Network, where he was responsible for advertising, sales, production, and program development for MSGN, as well as the broadcast and cable operations of all Garden events. When Mr. Cohen began, MSG had limited advertising signage. By the time he left, the signage revenue stream had exploded. Among the major sponsors he procured were American Express and Anheuser Busch, both of whom remain to this day.

Mr. Cohen has been active in the production and management of live events at arenas and racetracks. In 1974 and ’76, he was named Billboard Magazine’s “Facility Manager of the Year.”

Mr. Cohen’s record of achievement extends well beyond television. He has advised numerous public organizations, including the New York State Council for the Arts. He is a board member emeritus of the March of Dimes and co-founder of the March of Dimes Sports Luncheon in 1984. He was a trustee of the New York Sports Museum and Hall of Fame. In 1996, he was the recipient of the Boy Scouts Good Scout Award and in 1998 received the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He is trustee emeritus of California Institute of the Arts. He is a board member of Joe Torre’s Safe At Home Foundation. He is a board member of Sports Video Group, which supports the professional community that relies on video, audio and broadband technologies to produce and distribute sports content. He was co-chair from 2013-19 of the Dean’s Council for the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. He is a board member and treasurer of the Maccabi World Union, an international Jewish sports organization with some 400,000 members, whose games every four years are the third largest international competition of world athletes.

Mr. Cohen’s path into the sports industry began in the late 1960s where his masters’ thesis at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business was on how the Flyers and 76ers competed for the leisure-time dollar of the Philadelphia sports fan. Mr. Cohen received permission and expenses from team owners Ed Snider (Flyers) and Irving Kozloff (76ers) to survey fans in return for access to his research. The thesis was published in the Philadelphia Bulletin. When it came time to select a career, Mr. Cohen was faced with a choice of the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose owner, Walter O’Malley, also is a Wharton alum, or Madison Square Garden, then headed by still another Wharton alum, Irving Mitchell Felt, and closer to his native New York City. He opted for MSG, but continued his relationship with the O’Malleys and it ultimately led to a Dodgers television rights deal. Mr. Cohen’s relationship with Ed Snider resulted in several rewarding business partnerships and a decades-long friendship.

Mr. Cohen attended Joel Braverman High School in Brooklyn and the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a BS in economics in 1968. He earned an MBA at Penn’s Wharton School of Business in 1970.

Mr. Cohen and his wife, Rita, reside in New York and Los Angeles. They have four children and four grandchildren.