Rebooted XFL Taps NBC Sports Lawyer as Legal, Business Chief (1)
The XFL, whose 3rd endeavor at a non-NFL football league debuts in February, hired veteran sporting activities law firm Wendy Bass as main small business and legal officer.
Bass invested the earlier two yrs as senior vice president of programming and rights management for NBC Sports Group. She oversaw acquisitions and programming and managed electronic media approach and partnerships.
At the XFL, Bass will guide the lawful, folks functions, and engineering departments. The league declared her retain the services of in a Nov. 29 statement. Bass claimed via e mail the new league is working with Latham & Watkins for media discounts, Quarles & Brady on trademark challenges, and Rochester, NY-based mostly Woods Oviatt Gilman on other issues.
The XFL was bought for $15 million out of bankruptcy in 2020 to an ownership team led by actor and entrepreneur Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. associate Gerald Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Associates LLC.
Previously controlled by skilled wrestling mogul Vince McMahon, the XFL submitted for Chapter 11 defense in April 2020 following the coronavirus pandemic compelled the upstart league to cancel its time right after only five online games.
The relaunched XFL completed a preliminary player draft very last thirty day period for its 8 teams positioned in Washington, St. Louis, Seattle, San Antonio, Orlando, Las Vegas, Houston, and Arlington, Texas, near Dallas. The league is primarily based in Arlington.
Earlier this calendar year the XFL finalized a partnership with the NFL on data sharing and football exploration. The league, just one of quite a few noteworthy sports investments by RedBird’s Cardinale, has a broadcast legal rights agreement with Walt Disney Co.-owned ESPN.
Bass claimed she was drawn to the XFL by Kevin LaForce, a previous NFL govt who joined RedBird final 12 months as a controlling director and head of the personal equity firm’s athletics and media small business. LaForce, who labored with Bass when he was at the NFL and she at broadcast lover NBC, achieved out about the opportunity, Bass stated.
The XFL said Bass stories to its President Russ Brandon, the brother of Gregg Brandon, who until just lately was general counsel for the NFL’s Buffalo Payments. Russ Brandon was also after president and CEO of the Bills, whose former normal manager Doug Whaley is the XFL’s top rated participant personnel govt.
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Bass joined NBC in 2005 following serving as an associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in New York. She continued to function with the regulation business in subsequent a long time negotiating media rights deals for big sporting functions, such as the Olympics, PGA Tour, Wimbledon, and the Kentucky Derby. Gary Zenkel, an NBC Sports govt and president of the network’s Olympics business, is a former Cahill Gordon associate.
McMahon’s primary eyesight of the XFL was created in partnership with NBC Sports activities, the Stamford, Conn.-centered sports activities programming division of NBCUniversal Media LLC, a media and leisure conglomerate owned by cable huge Comcast Corp.
A handful of lawyers experienced vital roles in McMahon’s XFL, which loved results on television and stadium attendance prior to the pandemic halting enjoy. McMahon’s first XFL debut in 2001 lasted a handful of months ahead of he and NBC pulled the plug.
Several former XFL lawyers have moved on to new positions. Mali Friedman, who the McMahon-led league employed to do well its prior typical counsel, Roxanne Kosarzycki, was named the top attorney for the NFL’s Washington Commanders this past January.
John Wilson, a K&L Gates sports regulation and technologies transactions associate who stepped in as interim normal counsel for the XFL when Friedman went on maternity go away ahead of the league’s pandemic-pushed insolvency, claimed he’s no for a longer time advising the alternative football outfit. He wished the league the ideal in its following iteration.
Alec Scheiner, a previous normal counsel of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, now serves as a sports activities and media expenditure associate at RedBird. Last calendar year RedBird hired Michael Chiaravalloti, a former running director for JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s non-public bank, to be its main compliance officer and in-residence counsel.
RedBird was recommended on its XFL buy by Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Sidley Austin represented Johnson’s camp on the offer, which shut in late 2020.
This past June, McMahon settled a long-managing wrongful termination dispute with the XFL’s former commissioner, ex-quarterback-turned-athletics executive Oliver Luck, shortly following McMahon stepped down as CEO of Globe Wrestling Leisure Inc.
Luck, a former affiliate at what is now Norton Rose Fulbright, had sought virtually $24 million in pay beneath a contract that McMahon desired to nullify by firing him for induce immediately after the XFL suspended participate in two many years ago.