Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling have taken on lead roles for longtime clients Alphabet Inc. and the National Football League on a big broadcast deal announced this week.
The NFL announcement Thursday that its Sunday Ticket package of out-of-market afternoon games will be available in the United States on YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels starting in 2023. DirecTV, a satellite TV provider swarmed last year by former parent AT&T Inc. has held the rights to distribute the package since 1994.
The seven-year deal is valued roughly $14 billion, or more than $2 billion a year. Alphabet, owner of Google and YouTube, had Told was willing to pay up to $2.5 billion per season, about $1 billion more than DirecTV paid.
Perkins Coie was Google’s outside counsel in the Sunday Ticket deal, two sources familiar with the matter said. The law firm, which has a stable of leading technology customers, is a must Jural advisor for Alphabet. Perkins Coie has handled about 8% of the company’s litigation in US federal courts over the past five years, according to data from Bloomberg Law.
Covington special counsel Michael Hill, antitrust and sports practice chief Derek Ludwin, and technology transactions associate Vesta Parvaresh advised the NFL on the deal, according to the firm. Covington has been a top tier business for the league.
Covington informed The NFL earlier this year on the sale of the Denver Broncos to a group led by a billionaire S. Robson Walton, lawyer and heir to the late fortune of Walmart Inc. Founder Sam Walton. the $5 billion deal was a record award for an American professional sports team.
The NFL’s close ties to Covington extend to its former commissioner, Paul Tagliabue, who is now a special adviser to the cabinet in Washington. Tagliabue was a partner at Covington before leaving the company in 1989 to join the New York-based league, where he would spend nearly two decades as a senior executive.
In 2014, Covington informed the NFL on its latest Sunday Ticket contract, an eight-year, $12 billion deal with DirecTV. Google’s new deal with the NFL, which comes after Apple Inc. Told withdrawn from the tender, marks the last move away traditional networks streaming to. Amazon.com Inc. launched its 11-year, $13 billion deal last September to flux NFL Thursday Night Football.
The NFL’s deal with Google does not include access through sports bars and restaurants to the list of Sunday afternoon league games. The NFL and YouTube said in a statement that they “will work together to determine other ways to support distribution” to commercial establishments, which under the league’s DirecTV deal had been subject to antitrust litigation.
Washington’s Covington and Wilkinson Stekloff represented the NFL and its 32 teams in this Casewhich went to arbitration after the U.S. Supreme Court decreases to hear a call two years ago.
through the grill
NFL teams are also still recruit corporate lawyers As the league prepares for the playoffs which begin next month.
Hogan Lovells partner William Nunn left the firm to join the Broncos as assistant general counsel. The firm advised Walton on his purchase of the Broncos and played a role in naming rights deal for the team stadium in 2019.
Timothy Aragon, a former partner of Hogan Lovells hired by the Broncos as top lawyer in August after taking over the team’s new ownership when it acquired the Broncos, their hire confirmed via email. Aragon said Nunn started Oct. 1. 18.
That same month, the Philadelphia Eagles, who at 13-1 had the best record in the league—announcement their hiring of Latham & Watkins partner Daniel-John “DJ” Sewell as associate counsel. Sewell has spent the past two years working at Latham and Brown & Sims in Houston.
Haslam Sports Group LLC, owner of Major League Soccer’s Cleveland Browns and Columbus Crew, announcement last month, his hiring of assistant general counsel Mary Shepro, who will work for both teams. Shepro has spent the past eight years as an associate at DLA Piper and Jones Day in Chicago, where she performed litigation and investigative work for clients in sports, media and entertainment.
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