By Patrick George
Jeff Gewirtz, the Executive Vice President, Business Affairs and Chief Legal Officer of BSE Global (BSE), has a had a remarkable, decades-long career as a sports lawyer.
To learn more about his journey, we visited him in New York City, where Gewirtz advises BSE’s ownership and his executive management colleagues on key business and legal matters for BSE’s holdings, including the Brooklyn Nets, Barclays Center, the New York Liberty, BSE Enterprises, the NBA G League’s Long Island Nets, the NBA 2K League’s NetsGC, and, through 2019, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and Webster Hall.
The interview follows below:
Question: Can you share the key milestones in your career that led you to your current position as Executive Vice President of Business Affairs and Chief Legal Officer of BSE Global, and how did your previous experiences shape your approach to sports law?
Answer: My first position following law school was as a corporate associate at the New York City law firm of Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller. It was, at the time, one of a handful of law firms with a meaningful sports industry practice, including clients such as the United States Tennis Association, U.S. Olympic Committee, the WTA TOUR, and the International Tennis Hall of Fame. I primarily worked for a firm partner named George Gowen III, who was the relationship partner for the firm’s sports industry clients and also served as the USTA’s General Counsel – the USTA had no in-house legal department at that time. As a result, I assisted Mr. Gowen on a wide range of legal matters for the US OPEN Tennis Championships, which was (and continues to be) an event controlled by the USTA. So, early in my career, I had exposure to the lawyering required around the commercial and operational aspects of a major global sporting event.
The firm also had a major advertising industry practice, which allowed for an opportunity to gain legal experience around various media, IP, and production issues and matters.
After leaving the Dunnington firm, I have held a variety of positions across the sports business landscape, including as General Counsel of the LPGA TOUR, where I was, quite literally, the only employee to have never played a round of golf (still have not). As the sole member of the legal department, I am sure the Commissioner I served under, Ty Votaw, preferred that I be working in my office rather than playing golf rounds at our home course, LPGA INTERNATIONAL. From there I served a Director of Legal Affairs for IOC Television & Marketing Services, based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The core focus of this position was negotiating global sponsorship and technology alliances with Fortune 500 companies under the IOC’s “TOP” Program. Following that, I joined The Coca-Cola Company, having met the Coca-Cola global sports marketing team through my negotiations with them during my representation of the IOC. Much of my time at Coca-Cola was focused on negotiating marketing, sponsorship and beverage availability alliances with leagues, teams, national and global sporting events, stadia, arenas, the NCAA, colleges and university athletics departments, and professional athletes. I next joined the U.S. Olympic Committee as General Counsel and Chief of Government Relations, following which I joined BSE Global – May will mark the start of my 17th year with the company.
Q: You have a very expansive title as executive vice president of business affairs and chief legal officer. How much of your time is spent on the legal side versus the business side?
A: It is not atypical for senior legal executives with professional sport properties to also have a business affairs role. The “business” side dovetails with the legal affairs work insofar as serving, for example, as an advisor on deal structuring in revenue-generating areas such as sponsorship and media, as well as having a co-lead role in negotiating a variety of transactions.
Q: What was the job like those first few years?
The first phase of my tenure with BSE was singularly focused on putting all of the pieces in place to allow for construction commencement and then opening of Barclays Center; we were based in New Jersey at that time, and our team was the New Jersey Nets. This “phase one” work included workstreams such as closing arena founding partner sponsorship deals, along with our Barclays Center naming rights transaction, tackling a number of real estate matters (including with public parties such as the State of New York) along with resolution of various litigation matters, collective bargaining with unions representing a wide-range of arena work units, arena development financing, securing entertainment event alliances with major event promoters, and negotiating critical vendor alliances, such as for ticketing and food and beverage concessions.
Since our September 2012 opening of Barclays Center, BSE formed a number of interesting business alliances, such as our handling of business operations for the New York Islanders, which used Barclays Center as its home arena for a few seasons, acquiring the leasehold rights to Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, and partnering with AEG to acquire the business of Webster Hall, a historic live music entertainment venue in Manhattan. While BSE is no longer involved with these properties, in addition to Barclays Center and the Brooklyn Nets, the current portfolio does include the WNBA’s New York Liberty, the Long Island Nets of the NBA G League, and NetsGC of the NBA 2K League.
Q: Can you share a bit about your journey of becoming a lawyer, and how do you believe your experiences influenced or shaped your decision to pursue a career in sports law?
A: While attending Tufts University, I read books authored by iconic pro tennis agents Mark McCormack and Donald Dell. While both briefly practiced law, they morphed their legal training into representation of professional athletes, including top-flight professional tennis players. I was a junior and college tennis player and, having been influenced by their writings and noting they both held a JD, I decided to attend law school with the end goal of working as a player agent for pro tennis players. Frankly, as I progressed through law school and enjoying my studies, I decided to a shift away from the athlete-agent side of the business – which, generally, does not have (or require) a meaningful quotient of lawyering; instead, I explored the intersection of sport and the law on the “other side of the table.” This led me to the sports industry corporate practice at Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller; a decision I have never regretted.
Q: Do you have any recommendations for those who are/want to pursue a law degree for the purpose of working in the field of sports law?
A: First, recognize that “sports law” is not an actual field of practice. Rather, there are a number of legal specialties that have application to the professional and intercollegiate sport sectors, respectively. Some examples include antitrust, labor, M&A, private equity, corporate finance, general corporate, tax, intellectual property, and others. Second, focus on your grades; nothing is a better entry point to the law firms that have sports industry practices than a pristine law school transcript. Third, serve on a law journal and explore whether there is a ripe subject in sport for your note or comment. Last, if offered, take a class in drafting commercial agreements; this does not have to have a nexus to sport.
Q: What does your internal legal team at BSE Global look like?
A: We are leanly staffed. Russell Yavner is our deputy general counsel, who first worked for us in our legal internship program while he attended Harvard Law School. HLS Professor Peter Carfagna recommends legal interns to us for the school’s annual “J-Term” three-week session, and we were fortunate to meet Russell through that avenue. After Russell spent some time at Schulte Roth, we brought him over as Associate Counsel; he has since risen to our Deputy GC post. Our other lawyer is Wendy Li, who we also met through our legal internship program. She interned for us while enrolled at Columbia Law and then joined us as Associate Counsel after a couple of years of great training in the M&A group at Davis Polk. They both handle a wide range of matters, as expected based on the size of department.
Q: Do you use any out-of-house counsel?
A: We use outside counsel for potential litigation and litigation matters, occasionally for employment matters, for complex IP questions, for advice around qualified employee benefit plans and tax questions, M&A, and anything else for which we do not have the requisite level of expertise or the bandwidth to handle.
Q: As a longtime member and now an Emeritus Director of the Sports Lawyers Association, would you like to go into detail about what the association does and the resources it provides to professionals within your field?
A: It’s the leading trade association for lawyers working in sport in the United States. We now have a number of international members as well. I’ve built many wonderful friendships and a strong network in 25+ years of involvement with the association.
Q: Lastly, what do you anticipate as kind of the leading legal issues within sports?
A: The continued evolution of legalized sports betting in the U.S., the changing landscape of how fans consume live sports outside the venue, and the rights of intercollegiate athletes to commercialize their NIL against the background of a fragmented regulatory landscape.
