Before Mark Cuban and Jerry Jones, there was Ted Turner, the larger-than-life billionaire owner who changed sports

Ted Turner was a sportsman of all types, a world champion in sailing and a World Series-winning owner in baseball.

He famously owned the Atlanta Braves, leveraging his ownership of the TBS superstation to broadcast their games across the country, all while showcasing his outsized personality at a time when many owners stayed behind the scenes.

Turner, who died Wednesday, bought the struggling Braves in the 1970s, put the team on his then-tiny TV station and then sold the signal to cable systems nationwide.

“He effectively transformed the Braves into a team with a national reach and set the table for ways that local teams have now gained more of a national footprint,” said Travis Vogan, a sports media professor at the University of Iowa.

With a burgeoning fanbase that stretched far beyond the South, the Braves turned into a World Series mainstay during the 1990s, and Turner finally hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy in 1995 before selling the franchise the next year.

In a statement Wednesday, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called Turner a “visionary whose impact on the media landscape transformed how fans experience sports.”

Turner also once owned the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks and NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers, and the rest of his sports in...