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Scott O’Neill
In his two years as CEO of Merlin Entertainments, Scott O’Neil oversaw several milestone achievements for the business, including the recent announcement of Merlin’s partnership with Minecraft. Matt Broughton caught up with him in the last weeks of his tenue.
Scott
Matt Broughton: Can you give us an overview of your career before Merlin? Scott O’Neil: Sure. I was most recently running a company called Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment. When I started, we were the Philadelphia 76ers - an NBA team - and by the time I left it was a multi-sport multi-venue sports conglomerate. We had an
investment platform, a real estate company.... so a lot of growth. That helped me because I was managing really incredible brands. We were very much in the public eye. So, from a PR standpoint, I spent a lot of time in communications. We went from worst to first in just about every possible way in our organisation - it was really fun and grew a lot in value. Before that, I was president of Madison Square Garden; you're in the biggest city in the world on the biggest stage in the world. We put over $1 billion into Madison Square Garden to keep it the world's most famous arena and an amazing and incredible experience. We spun the company out to be a separately traded public company. I dealt with some of the biggest deals and brands in the world, and also celebrities, so it was a really, really fun experience. Before that I was at the National Basketball Association, the NBA, the league office. TMBO was what I was most known for, and that was an in-house consulting arm. We were building best practices at the team. So, you had 30 different teams in the NBA, and we were figuring out what was working and how you could lift the stuff that was working to the other teams to grow their business faster.
“This is a group that run towards the
are and what they aspire to be. It's been fun to be part of that team"
MB: What led to you being at Merlin? SON: I had left HBS after Covid to take a little breather and wrote a book [Be Where Your Feet Are: Seven Principles to Keep You Present, Grounded,
2025
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