AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

The Wall Street Journal

A year ago, Chris Albrecht was on the receiving end of a very public dismissal from a very lofty perch in the entertainment world.

After a night of heavy drinking in Las Vegas, the longtime creative chief of Time Warner Inc.’s HBO and driving force behind the likes of “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City” was arrested for attacking his girlfriend in a parking lot. He pleaded no contest to the charge and resigned under pressure days later.

Now, Mr. Albrecht is trying for a comeback. And he’s staking much of it on a bizarre, futuristic sport called SlamBall, which failed to break out in an earlier debut. With the feel of a live-action videogame, SlamBall is essentially basketball combined with rugby and trampoline gymnastics, and if Mr. Albrecht is right, it will become a phenomenon as successful and profitable as the latest sports craze, ultimate fighting.

“There are not a lot of new sports being invented,” Mr. Albrecht, 55, said this week. “This was not just a sport that would be fun to watch, but it’s a business that we can build.”

“To the extent that there is some sort of scoreboard that people are keeping on me personally, I guess there is something at stake,” he added later, “but I believe in my partners here.”

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