By Holt Hackney
The ascension of the sports lawyer has been well-chronicled over the last year, fueled in part by the financial attractiveness of properties in the sports industry and the NIL phenomenon.
There are plenty of markers on the way, too, such as last year’s Sports Lawyers Association’s drawing a record number of attendees.
Not coincidentally, this de facto roundtable discussion among sports leaders publishes at roughly the same time as this year’s conference, in Chicago, which will likely draw even greater numbers.
The panelists include Matthew Eisler, of Latham & Watkins; Irwin Kishner, of Herrick Feinstein; and Craig Umbaugh, of Hogan Lovells.
Question: In what ways has your practice intersected with professional sports over the last year?
Eisler: We completed several marquee transactions, including the sale of the Portland Trail Blazers and the acquisition of expansion rights to the Denver Summit NWSL team, bringing Colorado its first‑ever professional women’s sports franchise. At the same time, our practice has expanded significantly into the institutional investor market; for example, we represented four of the six institutional funds invited to invest in the NFL’s new Flag Football league.
Kishner: We have had the good fortune of representing clients across the sports industry including professional leagues and teams, franchises, owners, investors, athletic conferences, broadcasters, media content companies, private equity funds and a range of other stakeholders in the sports sector. In the past year we have worked on a variety of transactions including the launch of new sports clubs in emerging leagues, representing ownership groups in the acquisition of new leagues, sponsorship agreements, representing private equity funds in their investments in sports assets, forming new professional leagues, as well as joint ventures, credit facilities, wagering matters, franchise transfers and financings sponsorship and concessions transactions.
Umbaugh: The last year has been an active one for our sports practice at Hogan Lovells. Stadium development has been a defining thread, we are seeing a pipeline of new venue projects and mixed-use developments, each with interesting real estate, financing, regulatory, and environmental considerations. We handled a number of change of control transactions throughout professional sports, including outside of the U.S. We have been a major player in Italian football, guiding investor groups in the last two Serie A transactions (i.e., the acquisition of a significant stake in Cagliari Calcio and advising Presidio Investors on its acquisition of Hellas Verona). Our Riyadh office also advised on the sale of UD Almería Football Club. We’ve also advised AXS, a leader in advanced ticketing and live event technology, on multiple M&A and joint venture transactions. The practice is also engaged in early-stage advisory work in connection with new international sports tournaments, reflecting growing client interest in building the next generation of global sporting competitions from the ground up. These deals speak to the depth and truly global reach of our practice.
Question: What trends in professional sports are you focusing on for the coming year?
Kishner: There has been a fervent interest by private equity funds in investing in the sports industry, and we foresee that continuing to grow. We have also seen that interest in, and growth of, mixed-use developments has remained a strong and vibrant area. Live sports programming continues to grow worldwide and with the expansion of additional platforms there has been an explosion in viewership. There has also been growth in emerging teams and leagues as well as continued growth of women’s sports. The legalization of wagering and the proliferation of prediction markets has also driven value into the industry.
Umbaugh: Women’s professional sports is unquestionably at the top of the list. It’s a high-growth sector attracting serious institutional capital, major media rights deals, and sophisticated ownership groups. The use of technology and AI in sports is an area the practice is watching closely. From AI-generated content and deepfakes implicating athlete NIL rights, to data analytics, wearables, and performance technology raising novel contractual and IP questions, the legal issues are complex.
The globalization of sports, particularly around live events and ticketing technology, is a trend worth highlighting. Our work with AXS, including their joint venture with EVENTIM on ticketing and hospitality packages for the LA28 Olympic Games, is a great example of how the intersection of sports, technology, and major global events is creating increasingly complex and interesting legal work. Finally, as with everyone, we are watching the increased diversity of investments from private equity and sovereign wealth funds.
NIL and the broader transformation of the collegiate model also remains a priority. The landscape for college athletes, universities, and the brands and investors entering this space continues to evolve rapidly, and the legal questions it raises are genuinely novel and consequential. We are able to combine expertise from our top-ranked Education practice with our sports practice to provide a distinctive perspective on the genuinely novel legal questions this environment is generating.
Sports betting and tribal gaming is another area of significant focus. The continued expansion of legalized sports betting across U.S. states, combined with the growing sophistication of tribal gaming operations, is creating a complex and fast-moving regulatory and transactional environment that intersects directly with the firm’s sports and gaming capabilities.
Eisler: In the transactional space, we are seeing a growing number of institutional investment funds seeking league approval to access the sports market. These funds are drawn by diversification benefits, the ability to provide smaller investors exposure to sports assets, and the potential upside driven by new media rights and evolving revenue streams.
Question: Have there been additions to the sports team or shifts in terms of the team’s focus on new areas in the sport industry?
Umbaugh: We welcomed Jill Kelley as a partner in the Corporate & Finance practice in our New York office. Jill comes to us from the New York Jets, where she served as General Counsel and Vice President of Legal Affairs, advising on everything from business strategy and complex commercial transactions to data security and regulatory compliance, at one of the ten most valuable sports assets in the world. Before the Jets, she was General Counsel at PointsBet USA and spent several years as Senior Legal Counsel at Foxwoods Resort Casino. That combination of NFL, sports betting, and Native American tribal investment experience is truly rare, and it meaningfully deepens our capabilities for clients operating across sports teams, stadiums, gaming, and technology. We’re thrilled to have her.
We’ve also celebrated the promotion of Eric Andalman to partner. Eric is a seasoned advisor focused on the development and financing of major sports and entertainment venues and complex construction projects. He has negotiated and advised on more than $10 billion in new construction and renovations across NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, UEFA, and NCAA venues, more than 24 arenas, stadiums, and training centers in total. Before joining Hogan Lovells, Eric served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel at CAA ICON, a division of CAA Sports, which gives him a uniquely practical, owner-side perspective on how these projects actually get built and financed. His promotion reflects exactly the kind of deep, specialized expertise that sets our sports practice apart.
Together, these additions represent the continued investment we’re making in building the preeminent sports practice in the market.
Eisler: Latham has made a significant investment in the sports transactional market, adding top practitioners Matthew Eisler, its new Head of Sports Capital, and Russell Hedman, a recognized market leader in the sector. These additions further strengthen Latham’s already substantial entertainment, media, and sports practice and underscore the firm’s commitment to executing the most complex and impactful transactions at the highest levels of the industry. It reflects the strength and vibrancy of sports as an asset class, with transaction activity that is meaningfully shaping the market.
Kishner: We are adding a Corporate partner to our team who has vast experience advising clients on complex transactional and commercial matters related to technology, intellectual property and media. Our team continues to service clients across the sports industry. While we have maintained our core strengths, our practice continues to grow in a number of areas including the representation of private funds in their investments in the sports sector. These investments vary across leagues and teams from sailing to a variety of basketball competitions, media and entertainment platforms and women’s soccer. We have also seen a growth in our representation of emerging leagues branching off traditional professional sports and we have been involved everything from league formation to player retention agreements.
