THE FUTURE OF SPORTS BUSINESS: FINANCE AND INVESTMENT
SPEAKERS
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Samir Ceric
Results-proven, growth-oriented and globally accomplished leader with repeated success in multiple industries and markets, expanding international footprint, building shareholder value, driving vision and achieving critical strategic goals. Successful M&A and restructuring track record.
Ceric appeared live on ITV, BBC, NBC News, N1 (regional CNN), Al Jazeera, FACE TV, FTV, BH Radio as well as in articles in The Times, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Reuters, Time Out London, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, Vogue Italia, Vogue UK, Madame Figaro. He’s been labelled as one of the ‘UK’s Most Powerful People in Art & Fashion’ by the Times Magazine and ‘London’s Top Tastemaker’ by Time Out London. Ceric regularly attends business and investment conferences in Europe and Asia as a panellist and moderator.
Mimi Corden-Lloyd
Mimi Corden-Lloyd is a Financial Planner at Evelyn Partners, specialising in sport and media, where she empowers high-achieving individuals and their families with financial education and strategic advice. With a focus on men’s football, TV & Film, and a deep-rooted passion for women’s sport, Mimi is a vocal advocate for elevating female voices in the sporting world. She champions greater inclusion and responsiveness from governing bodies to the needs of women in sport, believing that financial wellbeing is a powerful tool for equity and long-term success.
An elite distance runner competing nationally and internationally, Mimi also serves as Head of Partnership and Sponsorship for her running club—home to Olympians and sponsored professionals. She has delivered impactful collaborations with brands like Nike, New Balance, and Maurten, helping athletes thrive on and off the track. Mimi brings a unique blend of financial insight, lived athletic experience, and purpose-driven leadership to every stage she steps on.
Tom Graham
Tom Graham is a seasoned media executive with over a decade of experience delivering multi-million pound commissioned programmes, rights, and talent deals across all television genres. He has a deep understanding of the media landscape, with particular expertise in high-value sports rights. Known for his strong leadership skills, Tom excels at building and guiding teams through change while maintaining a clear focus on business objectives and strategic outcomes. He is currently a Director at ITV.
Jonny Katanchian
I’ve been at Genius Sports for the past 8 years – have predominantly struck new partnerships with our c. 400 leagues and federations by providing services such as data collection, tracking, broadcast enhancement and performance services. In recent times, I have expanded remit towards the broadcast space where we’ve been leveraging our GeniusIQ technology stack to create new fan experiences on broadcast and drive new revenues through incremental ad-inventory.
Romain Guenin
Romain Guénin focuses on real estate finance as well as on structured finance, and his experience extends to a broad range of domestic and cross borders financing matters (including syndicated lending, leveraged acquisition and export finance).
Romain developed a strong expertise on complex mortgage financings, assisting lenders (credit institutions, debt funds) and borrowers (sponsors, insurers and other institutional investors) on a wide range of property investment and development financings, involving various types of assets such as logistic, office and hospitality.
Romain has also acquired a solid experience in the loan restructuring and special servicing area, advising on several distressed portfolio mortgage financings.
Romain’s practice covers securitization (incl. CMBS, auto loan receivables, lease receivables, NPL and other asset backed securities), factoring and asset-based lending, in respect of which he advises financial institutions, corporates and originators.
Alexander Steinberg
Alexander Steinberg has extensive experience advising sports, media and entertainment-related clients in a wide variety of transactional based matters. His practice focuses on:
Corporate transactional matters, including acquisitions and dispositions and strategic joint ventures
Content licensing and distribution matters and other complex licensing arrangements
Commercial matters, including sponsorship agreements (including naming rights agreements), ticketing agreements, concessions and merchandise agreements, and gaming related agreements
Financing transactions, and other matters relating to general corporate practice
Alex regularly provides counsel to programming networks, broadcast stations and other rights holders across a full spectrum of legal and strategic business matters, including domestic and international affiliation agreements (both with traditional distributors and “over the top” distributors) media rights agreement (both local and national), and distribution via emerging technologies.
Alex has represented buyers, sellers, financial investors (private equity funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc.) and sports franchises in the National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and European football leagues. In addition to representing clients in strategic transactional matters, Alex acts as an advisor to the firm’s sports and media clients on a wide range of general business law matters.
Paola Marinone
Paola is an ex Google/YouTube manager turned tech entrepreneur. She is currently based in London, with an international career in technology, and has lived all over the globe, counting 8 countries so far. Having worked for Google and YouTube in its early days, and then founded BuzzMyVideos, she has lived first hand the transformation of entire industries and built a cutting edge knowledge on anything related to online video. She has experienced working with International Federations, Clubs, Major Record Labels and Brands.
Neil Daugherty
Mark Whitaker
He comes to DLA Piper from Nixon Peabody, where as a member of its Sports & Entertainment practice he was instrumental in a number of publicly, privately and jointly financed deals, including financings for new stadiums and arenas for the New Jersey Nets, Orlando Magic, Minnesota Twins, New York Yankees and New York Mets (please see the accompanying list of select, representative matters). He was also involved in high-profile financings for stadiums and arenas for NFL, NBA and MLB teams, including the New York Jets, New York Giants and New England Patriots, as well as for affiliates of the Dallas Cowboys and New York Yankees. He also represented the Ricketts family in financing a controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field and related assets.
Mr. Whitaker has broad experience with transactions involving public infrastructure, including transportation infrastructure; convention centers and hotels; colleges, universities and other section 501(c)(3) organizations; solid waste disposal facilities; power generation facilities; low-income housing facilities; manufacturing facilities; and shopping centers. He has structured and negotiated senior lien secured and unsecured debt, including credit facilities, exempt public offerings, limited offerings and private placements, as well as subordinated debt and related intercreditor arrangements. He also has experience with the securitization of judgment receivables and governmental lease obligations.
In 2010, Mr. Whitaker was named to the Sports Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 list, in recognition of his accomplishments in structuring financings for sports franchises and facilities. He has appeared as a speaker and panelist at conferences held by the National Association of Bond Lawyers and the New York State Economic Development Council.
Selected Representative Matters
Representation of the New York City Industrial Development Agency in connection with the development, construction and financing of two new baseball stadiums for Major League Baseball’s New York Mets and New York Yankees. These financings used a unique legal structure that the firm developed, which allowed the stadiums to be financed primarily on a tax-exempt basis. The Firm successfully represented the Agency in its requests for two separate private letter rulings from the Internal Revenue Service for these projects. These financings jointly received The Bond Buyer’s award for “2006 Deal of the Year” and the financing for the new Yankee Stadium received Project Finance magazine’s award for “North American Leisure Deal of the Year 2006.”
Representation of the lenders in connection with the bank financing of the team’s contribution of funds to finance the construction of a new 42,000 seat ballpark for Major League Baseball’s Minnesota Twins, working in close connection with the Minnesota Ballpark Authority, which coordinated the public financing of approximately 70 percent of the costs of developing and construction of the facility, now known as Target Field.
Representation of the underwriters in connection with the financing by Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation (a New York not-for-profit local development corporation) of a new arena (Barclays Center) for the National Basketball Association’s New Jersey Nets, which is currently being built in Brooklyn. Advice was also provided with respect to maximizing the use of tax-exempt bond financing for the arena.
Representation of the lenders in connection with the bank financing of the team’s contribution of funds, to finance the construction of a new arena for the National Basketball Association’s Orlando Magic, now known as the Amway Center. A substantial portion of the development and construction costs of this facility were publicly financed.
Emeric Hudault
Dom Dixey
Christina Sharma
Christina’s practice is both national and international, having acted for domestic and global clients in local and cross border disputes in the English High Court and International Arbitration arena. Christina is known for her commercial strategy and for ensuring that her clients achieve the best possible outcome. Her clients include corporates, football clubs, private equity houses, Pension Funds, Banks, local governments and high net-worth individuals.
Her work spans many sectors, including technology disputes; aviation; manufacturing and industrials; media, sports and leisure; data breaches and cyber security; and energy disputes.
Christina is a member of DLA Piper’s dedicated Technology Disputes Team and has experience of advising on disputes arising across a range of technology related issues, including software and IT implementation contracts and IT infrastructure. Her advice to clients in this sector covers the full lifecycle of a contractual commercial relationship and involves risk prevention advice in relation to contract management issues, change controls and variations; as well as acting on major disputes relating to the design, development and implementation of IT solutions and the termination of IT supply contracts. Christina has acted for and against IT suppliers.
The experience section below focuses on just some of the cases which Christina has advised upon. She is known for her commercial strategy and for ensuring that her clients achieve the best possible outcome. Many of the cases demonstrate Christina’s ability to provide tailored and strategic advice to suit the client’s commercial goals, which often result in successful dispute resolution.
Christina is part of the NW Litigation & Regulatory team and leads the team in Liverpool. She is noted to be a Rising Star by LEGAL 500, UK.
Charlotte Lewis-Williams
Her clients include multinational banks, credit funds and other non-bank lenders, sponsors and corporates across a variety of sectors.
Andres Lorrio
Giovanni Ragnoni Bosco Lucarelli
