Randy Levine

Randy Levine has been president of the New York Yankees since January 2000, running the business operation while Brian Cashman runs the baseball side and the Steinbrenner family owns the whole thing. He's not a baseball guy by trade. He's a lawyer and a former Deputy Mayor of New York City who negotiated labor deals for a living before he ever set foot in the Yankees' offices. Twenty-seven seasons later, he's got two championships on his resume, a $1.5 billion stadium he helped build, and a regional sports network he founded, lost partial control of, and then bought back.

From City Hall to the Bronx

Levine didn't come up through a farm system or a scouting department. He came up through government. Born February 22, 1955, in Brooklyn, he earned a bachelor's degree from George Washington University in 1977 and a law degree from Hofstra in 1980, then spent the back half of the Reagan administration working inside the Justice Department (principal associate deputy attorney general, if you want the actual title). He left in 1988, did a few years in private practice, and then Rudy Giuliani hired him as New York City's Labor Commissioner in 1994.

That job turned into MLB's chief labor negotiator two years later -- Levine hammered out the 1996 collective bargaining agreement, the one that introduced revenue sharing, the luxury tax, and interleague play to the sport. (So if you've ever complained about the luxury tax, you can blame him personally.) Giuliani brought him back to City Hall in 1997 as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development, and Levine ran that office for three years before resigning in January 2000. The Yankees hired him as team president the very next day. No gap year, no soul-searching sabbatical. Just a straight walk from City Hall to the Stadium.

The Stadium Deal Nobody Else Could Have Closed

The single biggest thing Levine ever did for the Yankees is a building. He led the development and financing of the new Yankee Stadium from the start, and it wasn't a simple handshake deal -- it required tax-exempt PILOT bonds, city and state approvals, and years of political fighting before a shovel ever hit dirt. Groundbreaking came on August 16, 2006, the 58th anniversary of Babe Ruth's death (a detail that was absolutely not an accident). Construction ran for two and a half years across the street from the old ballpark.

The financing drew real heat. Critics argued the city and federal government were quietly subsidizing a private stadium through those tax-exempt bonds, and Levine got called to Washington to defend it. On October 24, 2008, he testified before a congressional subcommittee investigating exactly that.

Had this PILOT financing mechanism not been in place, a new Yankee Stadium would not have been built, and without any new stadium, regrettably, the Yankees would have been forced to leave The Bronx.

Whether you buy that framing or think it's a negotiating tactic dressed up as a threat, the building got built. The new Yankee Stadium opened for real on April 16, 2009, and the club won the World Series that same year -- the second championship of Levine's tenure, after the 2000 Subway Series sweep of the Mets in his first year on the job. Two rings, one stadium, a lot of angry op-eds in between.

Building a Network From Scratch, Then Buying It Back

Levine's other signature move barely gets talked about outside business circles, and it might matter more than the stadium. He was the principal founder of the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network -- YES -- which launched on March 19, 2002, after the Yankees passed on staying with Cablevision and partnered with Goldman Sachs to build their own channel instead. Cablevision spent the network's entire first year refusing to carry it, which meant a real chunk of the New York market couldn't watch the team they cared about most. That got fixed with a temporary deal in 2003 and a long-term one about a year after.

YES eventually got sold off in pieces to Fox and then Disney, the way regional sports networks do when corporate ownership shuffles TV assets around. Levine spent 2019 clawing it back. Working with Amazon and Sinclair Broadcast Group, he led the group that bought Disney's 80% stake for $3.47 billion -- the Yankees ended up with 26% of their own network, Sinclair took 20%, Amazon took 15%, and RedBird Capital, Blackstone, and Mubadala split the rest. That's a lot of corporate plumbing for a network that just shows Yankees games, but it's also the kind of deal that keeps the franchise controlling how its own product gets broadcast. Levine called it "the gold standard for regional sports coverage" when the deal closed. He'd know -- he built the thing.

Still the Guy Who Talks First

Levine's stuck around long enough to become the front office's public voice on player negotiations, too, even when the actual roster moves belong to Cashman. In September 2022, with Aaron Judge in the middle of a 62-homer walk year, Levine went on a podcast and put the organization's cards on the table before anyone asked him to.

We think he's a great player, beyond a great player. We think he's a great person. I think there's no question we want him back and no question we value him.

Judge signed a nine-year, $360 million deal that December, the richest position-player contract in franchise history at the time. Levine didn't negotiate that one directly -- that's Cashman and ownership's lane -- but he's the guy who goes public first, again and again, on the stuff that matters to the fan base. That's been the job description since 2000: run the business, front the tough conversations, and let Hal Steinbrenner and Cashman handle the rest.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Yankees team president?

Randy Levine has served as president of the Yankees since January 2000, making him one of the longest-tenured team presidents in Major League Baseball. He runs the club's business operations, distinct from Brian Cashman, who runs baseball operations as general manager, and the Steinbrenner family, who own the franchise.

What did Randy Levine do before joining the Yankees?

Levine was a lawyer who worked in the Reagan Justice Department before entering New York City government under Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He served as NYC Labor Commissioner starting in 1994, then became Major League Baseball's chief labor negotiator and helped write the 1996 CBA. Giuliani brought him back to City Hall as Deputy Mayor for Economic Development in 1997, a post he held until resigning in January 2000 to become Yankees president.

Did Randy Levine negotiate the new Yankee Stadium deal?

Yes. Levine led the development and financing of the new Yankee Stadium, which opened in 2009 at a cost of $1.5 billion. The financing relied on tax-exempt PILOT bonds, a structure controversial enough that Levine testified before a congressional subcommittee in October 2008 to defend it, arguing the Yankees would have left the Bronx without that funding mechanism.

What is Randy Levine's connection to the YES Network?

Levine was the principal founder of the Yankees Entertainment and Sports (YES) Network, which launched on March 19, 2002, after the Yankees chose to build their own regional sports network with Goldman Sachs rather than stay with Cablevision. In 2019, after Disney had acquired an 80% stake through its Fox regional sports network purchase, Levine led the Yankees, Amazon, and Sinclair Broadcast Group in buying that stake back for $3.47 billion.

How many World Series titles has Randy Levine won as Yankees president?

Two -- the 2000 Subway Series sweep of the Mets, his first year on the job, and the 2009 title, won in the new Yankee Stadium's inaugural season.

Twenty-six years is a strange kind of tenure for a franchise executive who isn't an owner and doesn't run the roster. Levine's outlasted managers, GMs before Cashman, and entire eras of the team's on-field identity, all while working the business side most fans never think about until the stadium bill or the TV contract lands in the news. A stadium, a network, a hospitality company, and now a seat on a soccer club's board in Milan. Nobody drew that career path on purpose. Levine just kept saying yes to the next building project.