Players on the Move

The demise of the sports streaming joint venture Venu Sports threw David Hillman, one of media’s most experienced general counsel, onto the job market, and now iHeartMedia has snapped him up. The San Antonio-based radio and podcast company has hired Hillman as chief legal officer, succeeding Jordan Fasbender, who left April 1 to become general counsel of a yet-to-be-named Comcast spinoff that will own MSNBC, CNBC, the Golf Channel and other cable TV networks. Hillman is filling the iHeart vacancy after a seven-month run as CLO of Venu Sports, a joint venture of Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery that planned to stream sports programming from the three companies. However, the owners pulled the plug in January, before Venu even launched. It ran aground after streaming rival Fubo sued on antitrust grounds and secured an injunction in August. Before Venu, Hillman spent eight years at Paramount Global, where he was general counsel of CBS Sports and CBS News, three years as GC of Simon and Schuster and seven years as GC of Westwood One. Fasbender had been at iHeart since 2019, coming aboard as deputy general counsel and becoming legal chief two years later. Earlier, she was associate general counsel at Twenty-First Century Fox. She’ll serve as the first general counsel of the Comcast spinoff, which will be based in New York City. … Ted Ullyot, the new legal chief of the New York City-based National Football League is a former White House attorney who was the general counsel of Facebook when it went public in 2012. He succeeds Jeffrey Pash, who retired after decades in the role. Pash joined the NFL in 1997 after serving as general counsel of the National Hockey League. Ullyot began his career as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, then spent four years at Kirkland & Ellis before joining AOL Time Warner as associate general counsel. He then headed to the White House, where he served as associate counsel and deputy assistant to President George W. Bush. From there, he moved to the Justice Department, where he was chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. He returned to the private sector in 2008, joining Facebook, then just four years old, as legal chief. After leaving the social media company in 2013, he joined the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz as partner. Since 2023, he's been managing director of Torridon Group, a boutique consulting and law firm, which he founded with William Barr, who was attorney general during President Donald Trump's first term. The changeover in the NFL’s general counsel post occurs as the league rides high, with its global reach expanding and its media-rights-deals growing ever-larger. The league’s revenue has swollen to about $20 billion. Commissioner Roger Goodell aims to reach $25 billion by 2027. … Kevin Manara steps down as general counsel of the National Football League’s Arizona Cardinals to take the same role with the Green Bay Packers. Manara had been the Cardinals’ legal chief since July 2023 and before that served for a year as general counsel of the Las Vegas Raiders. He joined that franchise after serving as the NFL’s vice president of labor relations and policy from 2008 to 2021. The Packers have been hunting for a new GC since last summer, when the team announced it was promoting Ed Policy, the team’s general counsel for the past dozen years, to CEO, effective with the July 2025 retirement of current CEO Mark Murphy. The Packers, established in 1919, are the third-oldest franchise in the NFL and the only nonprofit, community-owned professional sports team in the United States. Before joining the NFL, Manara was an associate in the labor and employment department at Proskauer Rose and worked in licensing and marketing for the National Basketball Association. … Eliminating an unusual and longstanding compensation policy last year that allowed Netflix executives to decide how much of their pay was in salary and how much was in equity caused Chief Legal Officer David Hyman’s salary to plunge last year — but his overall compensation rose. The company's proxy statement, filed in April with the Securities and Exchange Commission, shows Hyman earned $17.3 million, up 26% from a year earlier. His salary was $1.5 million, compared with 2023’s $4 million. Most of Hyman’s 2024 pay was in the form of $9 million in stock awards. He also received $6 million in cash incentive plan compensation. Los Gatos, CA-based Netflix’s new approach to compensation — which caps the amount of salary executives can receive — brings it more into line with other tech companies and makes the company less vulnerable to criticism from institutional investors. They don’t like multimillion-dollar salaries because the executive receives the money even if the company is flailing. Stock grants, on the other hand, rise or fall in value based on the underlying performance of the company. Shareholders will get to weigh in on Netflix’s new pay approach at the company’s annual meeting on June 5. Support for the old approach had been dismal, garnering just 28% support at the 2022 and 2023 meetings. Given Netflix's meteoric 89% rise in its stock price last year, it’s unlikely Hyman will fret that a bigger chunk of his compensation is in the form of equity. Hyman has held his current position since 2002. He was the fourth-highest paid Netflix executive last year. Pay for co-CEO and president Ted Sarandos soared to $62 million, from $49.8 million in 2023. Netflix revenues last year rose 16%, to $39 billion. … Don Liu has joined Flutter Entertainment, the parent of online sports betting juggernaut FanDuel, as chief legal officer. The move brings an abrupt halt to Liu’s retirement, just eight months after he stepped down as chief legal and compliance officer of Target. Liu — who will report to Flutter CEO Peter Jackson — will work out of Flutter’s operational headquarters in New York City, which also serves as FanDuel’s headquarters. Flutter is a global business and also has offices in England, Ireland and other international markets. Liu is succeeding Pádraig Ó. Ríordáin, who notified Flutter last year that he would retire in April 2025. … Brown Rudnick is opening its first office in Los Angeles with six lawyers, including partner Daniel Rozansky. Rozansky was formerly a partner at Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, where he was lead attorney for that firm’s Media and Entertainment Litigation practice. Before joining Stubbs Alderton, he was a partner at Jenner & Block for more than three years. Rozansky’s Brown Rudnick bio states: “Dan represents clients across multiple media and entertainment platforms, including film, television, music, concerts and touring and digital media. He advises clients, including Fortune 100 companies, on best practices for recording communications, and protecting trade secrets and other confidential information; identifying and avoiding potential liabilities in television pilots, screenplays and other creative material in development; and exit strategies for unfavorable business relationships.” … Music attorney Ross Charap joins Barton as a partner in New York City. Before joining Barton, he was a partner with ArentFox Schiff and provided copyright enforcement services to The Harry Fox Agency. Prior to that, he was in-house counsel at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. According to Charap’s Barton bio: “Over his career, Ross has closed transactions for assets worth over a total of $1 billion. His work has also earned him recognition as a Billboard Top Music Lawyer from 2022 to present. He was originally recognized by Billboard for his work with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in helping to safeguard their entitlement to performing rights and mechanical royalites after exercising their termination rights. Ross was also instrumental in persuading the US Copyright Office to enact policy changes to ensure that the Mechanical Licensing Collective paid post-termination royalties to songwriters, resulting in many millions being paid out to songwriters like Jagger and Richards.”