UPDATE: 8/5/13, 5:15 p.m. EDT. Information on the names of the lawyers from Shearman & Sterling advising on the $170 million sale of the NHL's Phoenix Coyotes announced Monday has been added to the 17th paragraph of this story.

Two months after Major League Soccer announced a $100 million deal to bring a top-tier professional soccer team back to Manhattan, the upstart league has unveiled plans to add four more teams by 2020, while also announcing the $68 million sale of the Columbus Crew franchise to a new ownership group.

At least three Am Law 100 firms are working on the Crew deal, which—though modest compared to the extravagant sums other pro sports teams in the United States have fetched—sets a new record for the sale of an existing MLS team, according to Forbes.
The Crew have been owned by Hunt Sports Group, an entity named after the late Texas oil heir Lamar Hunt Sr., one of the league’s founding owners and a prominent backer of pro soccer in the U.S. The nation’s oldest ongoing tournament— the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup—bears his name, and as owner of the Crew, Hunt helped the team build the first soccer-specific stadium in the country in 1999.
Andrews Kurth corporate and M&A partner Victor Zanetti in Dallas took the lead working on the deal for Hunt Sports Group, which retains its ownership of the FC Dallas franchise. Zanetti did not immediately return a request for comment about the sale of the Crew to new owner Precourt Sports Ventures.
Anthony Precourt, the head of Precourt Sports and managing partner of San Francisco–based energy investment firm Precourt Capital Management, has promised to keep the Crew in Columbus. Schiff Hardin corporate partner Alexander Young in Chicago is advising Precourt in connection with the deal.
MLS itself has turned to its longtime outside counsel at Proskauer Rose, which counseled the league in May on the creation of New York City FC, to advise on the sale of the Crew. Proskauer corporate partner Jonathan Oram and associate Bradley Shron in New York are working closely on the transaction with MLS general counsel William Ordower and deputy commissioner Mark Abbott, a former corporate lawyer at Latham & Watkins.
The expansion envisioned by MLS, which has grown rapidly in recent years, has cities across the country vying to become the home of future franchises. The New York Times reported last month on how Sporting Kansas City, once one of the league’s worst-performing teams, has turned itself around following a name change and construction of a new soccer-specific stadium. ( Lamar Hunt sold the team in 2006.)
And it’s not just in the U.S. where Am Law 100 firms are picking up transactional work tied to the pitch.
Shahid Khan, owner of the National Football League’s Jacksonville Jaguars and auto manufacturer Flex-N-Gate Corp., spent roughly $260 million last month to acquire Fulham FC, an English Premier League franchise based in suburban London.
Khan had previously relied on Proskauer for both his ill-fated bid for the NFL’s St. Louis Rams in 2010 and his ultimately successful $760 million acquisition of the Jaguars a year later.
But the Fulham sale saw David Hull, a corporate partner and member of the sports law group with Squire Sanders in London, lead a team of lawyers advising Khan that included senior corporate associates Jonathan Prosser and Chris Watkinson. Hull, who spoke with Bloomberg TV this week about his work on the deal, is an M&A veteran when it comes to EPL teams.
As a partner at Hammonds, a top British firm that merged with Squire Sanders in late 2010, Hull counseled Indian poultry producer Venky’s on its acquisition of Blackburn Rovers FC. Hull has also handled sales involving EPL franchises Aston Villa, Leicester City, Manchester City, and Sheffield Wednesday.
Fulham owner and Egyptian billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, meanwhile, turned to Dechert and Herbert Smith Freehills for counsel on the sale to Khan, according to U.K. publication Legal Week. (Al Fayed tapped Herbert Smith in 2010 for counsel on the $2 billion sale of his upscale department store chain Harrods to a Qatari investment fund.)
Back in the U.S., the long-running ownership saga involving the National Hockey League’s Phoenix Coyotes may finally be coming to an end. A group seeking to buy the league-owned team has until Monday to meet a deadline set by the suburban city of Glendale, which has committed $225 million to keep the team in town as part of a 15-year arena management deal.
The Am Law Daily reported in May on the NHL’s rejection of the $277 million bid for the Coyotes made by an investor represented by Kutak Rock. The league, which is being advised in the matter by its longtime outside counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, has owned the team since spending $140 million to buy it out of bankruptcy in 2009.
Snell & Wilmer real estate partners Nicholas Wood, Joyce Wright, and John Baird and finance partners M. Lawrence Brown, Franc Del Fosse III, and Angela Perez are representing Renaissance Sports & Entertainment, an ownership group mostly composed of wealthy oil investors from western Canada and Texas. He declined to comment on whether a deal could be reached before Monday’s deadline when contacted by The Am Law Daily.
After four years of ownership, the NHL's board of governors officially approved the $170 million sale of the team on Monday. Also advising the new ownership group— called IceArizona Acqusition Co. LLC—are a team of lawyers from Shearman & Sterling led by M&A partners David Connolly and Scott Petepiece, finance partner Gregory Tan, tax partner Michael Shulman, employee benefits partner Doreen Lilienfeld, litigation partner Alan Goudiss, reorganization counsel Jill Frizzley, and M&A counsel Sean Skiffington.
Stadium Games
While some teams change hands and others remain on the auction block, yet others are retaining Am Law 200 firms to help secure financing for new facilities and undertake efforts to navigate the often tumultuous political process behind such costly ventures.
DLA Piper real estate partner David Reifman in Chicago is representing Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs on a $500 million renovation plan for historic Wrigley Field. The entirely privately funded deal, which was approved by Chicago’s city council last week, will go toward improvements inside and outside the stadium.
DLA got the work through Peter White, a former Nixon Peabody partner who joined the firm in 2010. White, now cochair of DLA’s global sports, media, and entertainment practice, helped the Ricketts family—the Cubs’s current owners—arrange the financing for its acquisition of the Cubs and Wrigley Field in 2009. White has also helped line up financing for a new stadium for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara, California.
In nearby Oakland, the NFL’s Raiders have put forth a proposal for a new 50,000-seat, $800 million stadium to which the team has committed $300 million of its own funds. Raiders general counsel Jeff Birren and in-house attorney Daniel Ventrelle did not respond to requests for comment on whether the team has retained outside counsel in connection with the matter. (Longtime Raiders executive Amy Trask, an attorney and trailblazer for women in pro sports, resigned from the team in May.)
Just down the California coast, the NFL’s San Diego Chargers are seeking up to $700 million in public funds to help finance the construction of a new stadium to prevent the team from moving to Los Angeles. Mark Fabiani, special counsel to the Chargers, told The Am Law Daily that he’s taken the lead on the project, which is currently on hold pending the fate of San Diego’s embattled mayor.
The NFL’s St. Louis Rams found out in July that they wouldn’t receive $700 million in public funds from the St. Louis Convention and Visitors Commission (CVC) for upgrades to their home stadium the Edward Jones Dome, leaving them free to exit their lease after the 2014 season, making them another candidate for relocation to Los Angeles.
The Rams did receive $2 million from the CVC in June to cover legal fees incurred by the team’s lawyers from Dentons in an arbitration battle over the stadium renovation plan with the CVC, advised by Husch Blackwell. ( The St. Louis Business Journal had a breakdown in April of the bill submitted by Dentons for its services.)
Another proposed NFL stadium project has gotten especially controversial of late. After an effort to push a renovation plan for Miami's Sun Life Stadium through the Florida legislature was thwarted in May, billionaire Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has formed a super PAC with the goal of recruiting candidates to challenge lawmakers opposed to the project.
One of those Ross has targeted is state representative Jose Felix Diaz, who is also of counsel at Akerman Senterfitt. The firm has previously done work for the Dolphins, including advising on the $1 billion sale of the team to Ross in 2009. Diaz told The Miami Herald this week that he has tried to keep a low profile during the public tussle over the financing for Sun Life Stadium renovations.
Two Akerman spokeswomen did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the firm being caught between the two parties, nor did Dolphins general counsel Adam Zissman, a former in-house attorney at Comcast and NBC Sports hired by the team in 2012 to lead its legal efforts on the stadium renovation matter.
Of course, even when a facility gets built, the legal problems don’t necessarily end.
Sullivan & Cromwell is representing the NFL’s New York Giants and New York Jets in litigation with a New Jersey mall developer accusing both of teams of hampering construction efforts for a mega-mall near their home stadium, according to sibling publication the New Jersey Law Journal.