General Counsel Interview – ATP Media – Tom Bullock, Head of Legal Affairs

Having seen the success of the ATP World Tour this month, Lawyer monthly reached out to Tom Bullock, Head of Legal Affairs at ATP Media, the broadcasting arm of the global sports tournament group.

Here Tom gives an idea of the kind of legal risks, priorities, and considerations he has to work around on a daily basis. He explains what the firm’s remit is, a little about the experiences and roles that brought him to where he is today, and touches on some of the goals and challenges ahead, both for him and ATP Media.

What is the biggest challenge you face being the Head of Legal Affairs at ATP Media, and what is the biggest reward you get from your role?

The biggest reward is simple – seeing live sports broadcasts being shown all across the world for over a billion people to enjoy and knowing that I was a part of the team that helped deliver that. We are lucky to be in an age where tennis is thriving and the top players are household names, so to be at the cutting edge of ensuring that it is delivered to fans in a market leading manner is a real reward.

The biggest challenge is ensuring that there is no overlap in the granting of our rights to our broadcast partners. We sell rights to the 22 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and 500 events and the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in over 195 territories worldwide, often with multiple broadcasters in these territories. Rights are increasingly carved up between traditional linear television and the increased requirement for non-linear/digital content, and so I have to ensure we are not granting rights to partners that may cut across any existing deals we have done. Our broadcast partners are the lifeblood of the business and so protecting their rights is of paramount importance.

What are the recurring legal issues when broadcasters purchase rights from ATP Media and how do you deal with it?

As I alluded to above, the biggest legal issue is that of ensuring that the rights we are granting are unencumbered. We are very progressive in the way that we carve up our rights and sell them to our broadcast partners, and so keeping on top of that is crucial.

Aside from that, many of our broadcast partners are long term partners who have supported the growth of the sport for a long time. As such, we have an excellent working relationship with them and so ‘issues’ are thankfully relatively rare.

I would not class this as an issue, but the one area where we are seeing increased correspondence and negotiation with broadcast partners is in relation to digital exploitation of rights and the increased importance to consumers of OTT (direct to consumer) delivery.

How do you maintain ATP and ATP Media’s voice of brand, whilst adhering to legal requirements?

Being the official broadcast arm, we work incredibly closely with the ATP World Tour to ensure that ATP Media’s and the ATP World Tour’s brand messaging is totally aligned. We have also engaged Threepipe as our PR advisors, to ensure consistency of our messaging. There are no legal hurdles that we have been presented with thus far.

What is the working relationship and interplay like with the ATP World Tour and the various tournaments?

The working relationship between ATP Media, the ATP, and the tournaments is fantastic. ATP Media is actually owned equally by the ATP World Tour and the nine ATP World Tour Masters 1000 events and, therefore, our interests are almost always aligned. We work incredibly closely with the ATP in particular, collaborating on all aspects of what we are trying to achieve with the business. Of course, without the close support of all the tournaments, we simply wouldn’t be able to deliver what we do. I have an excellent relationship with the General Counsel of the ATP based in Florida as we enter into many cross border contractual relationships together.

If you were to choose one, what do you claim as the most vital legal issue that ATP Media faces?

Good question. We believe that ATP Media sets the benchmark for global sports broadcast coverage and continues to try to evolve the viewing experience through technological innovations. Because of this, some of the ‘Intellectual Property’ elements of contracts become vitally important.

However, there is a bigger legal problem that possibly looms large on the horizon – the ‘Digital Single Market’. The EU Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy is a wide-ranging and ambitious proposal to reform the digital market place within the EU. One of its key effects could well be a restriction on geo-blocking, and thus a severe impact could be placed on the ability of rights holders, such as ATP Media, to be able to sell its rights on a territorial basis.

I attend meetings of the Sports Rights Owners Coalition, a forum of over 50 international and national sports bodies and competition organisers with a particular focus on rights issues, in order to closely monitor and discuss the proposed reforms with the EU Commission to ensure full visibility on the impact the proposed legislative changes could have on not only the sale of sports rights, but the negative impact that they could have on sport as a whole. Remember, money generated from media rights sales is reinvested back into sports, and tennis is no different.

How do you navigate your legal team to ensure all affairs are seen to in the best possible way?

I am actually the sole in-house counsel at ATP Media, though I do have a very helpful and able assistant. To that extent, to ensure all affairs are seen to in the best possible way involves a lot of hard work, time management and reliance on key external advisors to assist in certain areas. As an in-house lawyer, I think it is an important skill to know your limitations – you simply can’t be a master of all trades, and there are only so many hours in a day. So I always ensure that where specialist advice may be needed, we take such advice to ensure the business is appropriately protected.

How different is the role at ATP Media in comparison to your previous roles at Allen & Overy and Onside Law? How did you find the transition?

The role at ATP Media is very different to both my role as a corporate associate in a huge Magic Circle firm and then as a commercial lawyer at a comparatively small boutique sports practice. But it’s different in a very good way! Obviously as the sole in house counsel, I am involved with absolutely every legal and contractual matter concerning the business – from the main rights sales contracts, to employment matters, to tax, to any litigation (dare I say it)!

That in itself is a big change from being a private practice lawyer where you often tend to focus on one specific area. The other main difference, and probably the area I am enjoying the most, is the ability to work alongside the CEO and COO on a day to day basis, and be involved in some of the commercial decision making. The CEO and COO at ATP Media are particularly encouraging of that (within reason!) and keep me involved with all matters that have a legal element. It really gives you a full understanding of the business, and I feel gives me the ability to be a much better lawyer because I can understand the real commercial issues that they are facing, rather than advising from a conservative legal standpoint, which isn’t always helpful to them.

In terms of the transition, I had been fortunate enough to have worked in house on multiple secondments over my career -notably at UBS, the LTA and Ladbrokes – so I had a very good understanding of the role of an in house lawyer.

Equally, Onside Law is a relatively small firm (in terms of number of people) and so the general office environment of being in a smaller organisation (ATP Media only has 24 permanent employees despite being a billion dollar business) was well known to me. All of the above, coupled with my relatively extensive tennis experience and the fact that every single person at ATP Media (bar none) was incredibly welcoming and extremely good at their job, actually made the transition quite easy.

To what extent do you have contact with and what is the biggest challenge when working with high profile tennis players?

All matters to do with player participation on the ATP World Tour are handled by the ATP and so to that extent I don’t actually have a great deal of contact with the players themselves.

However, with the increasing value to the players of analytics for coaching purposes of both footage and data (both of which ATP Media own and control by virtue of our broadcast and graphics) we are increasingly working with the players and their teams to provide them with the content that they require and are delighted to be able to do so.

We are also working closely with the ATP on this front to look at what and how we can deliver useful content to players. From my relatively short time at ATP Media I haven’t come across one ‘challenge’ of working with the players – they are always very appreciative of what we do.