Via Jacob Feldman at Sportico:

This week the former Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment CEO will start as CEO of Merlin Entertainments, the world’s second-largest theme park operator—trailing only Disney.

Merlin operates numerous Legoland, Madame Tussauds, and Sea Life locations around the world among more than 140 attractions, including the London Eye.

“I spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to be and what I want to do and I just kept circling around people, scale, and purpose,” O’Neil said in an interview. “Literally, this is as close to a dream-come-true opportunity as I could have imagined.”

Pretty perfect hire if you ask me:

If Scott O’Neil can make it as long as he did with the Sixers through The Process, tweeting pictures  of LinkedIn jargon at the worst possible times, Phil E. Moose, and fighting with Larry Brown over tanking, he can make it anywhere. All he has to do to be successful is hire a brilliant mind that institutes a new age level of thinking and openly root against it, fire the guy, hire someone who’s been around Legos forever, and have him hire his fraudulent son whose tenure ends in scandal, all while Merlin Entertainment’s valuation sextuples in less than a decade because the original guy was right. If he does that he’ll be very successful.

Did you know you can’t get into Legoland if you’re a single dude? Probably for the best: