Players On the Move

Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. (MSG) General Counsel Laura Franco departs after just 20 months on the job. The revealed Franco’s impending exit in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She joined the company — which owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall and the Chicago Theatre — after serving three years as chief legal and compliance officer of the dating site Bumble. The SEC filing said the company and Franco “agreed that she will be leaving the company” but provided no additional information on the circumstances. Franco did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an SEC filing that followed, MSG Entertainment broke out potential severance payouts for all senior executives in the event of a termination without cause, with Franco’s package valued at $4.4 million. That includes $2.2 million in cash severance, which is double her annual salary and target bonus, plus a partial-year bonus of $536,250 and immediate vesting of unvested stock awards valued at $1.6 million. Franco joined MSG in February 2024, succeeding Jamal Haughton, who became general counsel for Connecticut-based Charter Communications. Franco took on an unusual, dual role-serving as legal chief at MSG as well as Sphere Entertainment. The latter operates the $2.3 billion sphere-shaped venue in Las Vegas that opened in late-2023 with performances by U2. Franco earned $1.9 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30 of this year, according to MSG’s proxy statement. It is not clear how much she earned at Sphere. MSG declined to comment on who might succeed Franco as legal chief. … Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Rosemarie Ring — who has represented top technology companies, including Meta — joins The Walt Disney Co. as a deputy general counsel for litigation and patents. Ring had been a partner at Gibson Dunn’s San Francisco office since October 2021. She worked on high-profile cases including a $725 million settlement by Meta in 2022 to resolve claims that it provided Facebook social media platform users’ personal information to Cambridge Analytica. Ring will reportedly report to Disney Corporate Legal General Counsel David Howard. The company’s 1,400-person legal department is led by Chief Legal and Compliance Officer Horacio Gutierrez. Ring joined Gibson Dunn after nearly two decades at Munger Tolles & Olson. There, she represented top clients including Facebook, Microsoft, HTC, LinkedIn, Snap and ESPN — the latter owned by Disney. Ring had even established a fashion law practice representing companies such as Yves Saint Laurent and Versace. At Burbank, CA-based Disney, Ring will have no shortage of high-stakes matters to work on. A California judge recently signed off on a $43 million settlement Disney struck with more than 15,000 female managers who allege they were paid less than men for similar work. In September, Disney agreed to pay $10 million to settle Federal Trade Commission (FTC) allegations that it allowed personal data to be collected from children who viewed kid-directed videos on YouTube without notifying parents or obtaining their consent per the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule. Disney also has been under fire from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr over its DEI practices and for allegedly slanted and inaccurate news reporting by its ABC television network. ABC paid $15 million to settle a defamation case brought by President Donald Trump. … Christa D’Alimonte, who spent more than a decade steering legal strategy at Paramount Global, is taking on a new challenge as chief legal officer of global sports, music and entertainment company Wasserman. D’Alimonte officially stepped into the role Oct. 14, succeeding longtime legal head Mike Pickles, who is retiring after 15 years. Based in Wasserman’s New York office, D’Alimonte will oversee the company’s global legal operations and advise senior leadership on business and regulatory matters as the company continues its rapid expansion into new markets and media platforms. The move, for D’Alimonte, marks a return to the deal-making side of the entertainment world after her high-profile exit from Paramount earlier this year. In June, Paramount disclosed in a securities filing that her departure was “involuntary” and “without cause,” triggering a severance package valued at $6.5 million. She left at a time of upheaval for the studio, which had just seen merger talks with Skydance Media collapse and was under mounting financial strain from industry headwinds. The two companies later rekindled talk and completed their $8 billion merger in August. D’Alimonte joined Paramount in 2012 as deputy general counsel at Viacom, later rising to executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary following the company’s $15.4 billion merger with CBS in 2019. Before entering the corporate world, she spent nearly two decades at Shearman & Sterling, where she was a partner in the firm’s mergers and acquisitions group, advising clients across media, entertainment and investment banking. D’Alimonte arrives at Wasserman the company continues to widen its global footprint and diversify its business lines. Founded in 2002, the Los Angeles-based firm has grown from a sports talent agency into a sprawling marketing and representation powerhouse with operations in 28 countries and more than 70 cities. Its client portfolio ranges from elite athletes and chart-topping musicians to brands such as American Express and Diageo. Recent years have seen Wasserman, which employs more than 2,000 people globally, expand aggressively through acquisitions, including the 2023 purchase of CSM Sport & Entertainment and its subsequent rebranding across the Middle East. … Law firm Hall Booth Smith has added Georgia movie production veteran Don Mandrik in Atlanta as a partner and co-chair of its firm-wide entertainment practice group. Mandrik joins Hall Booth after most recently serving as managing director of the media division of Atlanta-based private equity firm Bay Point Advisors. He focuses his practice on representing content creators and financiers with clients that include major studios and streaming services, leading production soundstage facilities and independent production companies, according to the firm. Mandrik will help lead a practice group that deals with all aspects of the entertainment industry, ranging from intellectual property and operating agreements to premises liability and workers’ compensation at the Atlanta-based law firm. Justin Kerenyi will co-chair the Hall Booth entertainment practice group. Mandrik has worked in a series of film and digital media production-related positions where he guided their legal, financial and content production matters — including serving as executive producer on a series of feature films. He also worked extensively on projects covered by the Georgia Entertainment Industry Investment Act, which was approved in 2005 and offers a state tax incentive to content creators. The incentive is considered one of the most attractive in the U.S. and played a major role in luring film and gaming companies to establish Georgia as a major production hub and location for feature films, TV shows and video games. On the production front, Mandrik served as a producer or executive producer on numerous Georgia-based feature films, including CBGB starring the late Alan Rickman, and Get Low starring Robert Duvall and Bill Murray. … A major new media company doesn’t launch every day, especially one that’s coming out of the gate reaching 70 million U.S. households and generating $7 billion in annual revenue. That reality has helped Versant Media General Counsel Jordan Fasbender bring aboard an all-star lineup of lawyers since she stepped down as chief legal officer of iHeartMedia in April and began staffing Versant’s legal department. Philadelphia-based Comcast put the creation of Versant in motion last November when it announced plans to spin off most of the cable networks owned by its NBCUniversal unit into a stand-alone public company. The New York City-based company, which rolled out the Versant name in May 2025, is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq by early 2026. The company’s holdings include MSNBC, CNBC, USA Network, Golf Channel, E, SYFY and Oxygen, as well as the digital platforms GolfNow, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes and SportsEngine. Fasbender recently dashed off a memo to Versant staffers announcing that, with the hires below, she has filled out her leadership team, the attorneys who will report to her. They are Brian Barrett, senior vice president and chief news counsel, who spent the past decade as the primary newsroom counsel at The Associated Press, and Viviana Betancourt Vasquez, senior vice president of business and legal affairs for distribution and partnerships. She formerly was general counsel of the streaming platform EverPass and advised WWE, AMC Networks and Major League Baseball on content acquisition and licensing; Erik Bierbauer, senior vice president and chief litigation counsel. He comes to Versant from NBCUniversal, where he litigated cases for more than a decade and most recently served as senior vice president of litigation and information governance; Jonathan Gottlieb, senior vice president and deputy general counsel. He’s been serving as outside counsel to entrepreneurs and startups. Earlier, he was chief legal officer and chief business officer for Autograph, a Web3 digital collectibles and sports fandom startup, as well as an executive vice president of Fox Entertainment Group; Caroline Hadden, senior vice president and chief international counsel. She most recently spent three years at NBCUniversal, where she rose to senior vice president of legal for the NBC News Group; Jeremy Kaufman, senior vice president and chief IP and music counsel. He has more than two decades of in-house IP experience and held senior roles at Netflix, Twentieth Century Fox and Disney; Seth Levin, senior vice president and head of business and legal affairs. He most recently was executive vice president and deputy general counsel for business and legal affairs at Paramount Media Networks. Before that, he spent 21 years at Viacom, rising to senior vice president of business affairs and deputy general counsel; Chris Tarbell, senior vice president and chief privacy officer. He most recently was special counsel at Kelley Drye & Warren, where he advised clients on privacy, data security and consumer protection. Before that, he was associate general counsel for Fanatics, assistant general counsel for Disney and counsel at Fox Entertainment Group; Brad Toborowsky, senior vice president and chief employment and labor counsel. He most recently was with NBCUniversal for 12 years, eight of them as senior vice president of employment law and talent legal affairs; Katie Zaunbrecher, senior vice president and chief compliance officer. She joins from Warner Bros. Discovery, where since 2020 she was vice president and ethics and compliance officer. Fasbender wrote in her memo that the newcomers join Jayshree Mahtani, senior vice president, chief corporate affairs counsel and assistant corporate secretary; and Andrew Borteck, senior vice president and chief sports and digital platforms counsel. Mahtani is a former general counsel of the education platform Skillshare and a former deputy general counsel of Shutterstock, while Borteck moved to Versant from NBCUniversal’s NBC Sports Group, where he was senior vice president for business and legal affairs.