Beyond the Game: Inside Texas Pro Sports Law

Episode Notes

Transcript

Rocky Dhir:

Hi, and welcome to the State Bar of Texas Podcast. When I was a kid, I always got picked last for the sports teams in PE, always. I think it’s because the kids didn’t actually know my true athletic skills. If they did, then they would know better than to pick me at all. I’d be on the sidelines yelling, “You can’t do it. ” That’d be me. But I figured my hopes of getting picked up to be on a sports team ended forever once I went to law school and became a lawyer. But then my friend Eunice Nakamura got picked to be on a professional sports team, specifically the Texas Rangers Major League baseball team. I’ve known Eunice for years, but a couple of years ago, she became the general counsel for the Rangers. The Rangers were smart enough because unlike my teams in PE class, these guys were wise enough not to even approach me for their team.

They got the right team cap on their legal squad. But then I started digging a little deeper. Turns out being a sports lawyer can be fun and interesting. If you don’t believe me, just ask James O’Sullivan, the general counsel for FC Dallas. The professional soccer team located in Frisco, Texas, and with the FIFA World Cup coming to the Americas and North America and North Texas. I figured who better to join us on this journey into sports law. So Eunice and James have been kind enough to take a little time out of their daily schedule to come talk to us. So Eunice and James, welcome to the podcast.

James O’Sullivan:

Thank you. Thanks. Nice to be here.

Rocky Dhir:

We’re just going to get started off with two-part question. All right. So first of all, what’s it like being part of a professional sports team? And as lawyers, what’s it like being the nerdiest member of the team? So Eunice, let’s start with you.

Eunice Nakamura:

I think it’s amazing. I’m actually entering my second season, so I’m still new. And I think the magic of being around professional baseball, which is a personal passion of mine and being able to combine that with sports is awesome. I will say for my family especially, so my boys, my husband and my 12-year-old son, who also is an avid baseball player, it spills over both on the personal and the professional side. And so I get to live it out personally as well along with my family. And so in many ways it’s a dream come true being able to combine both my passion and my profession together. And so in a lot of ways, it doesn’t feel like work. I get to come to the ballpark every day. And I will say still, I guess the magic around it hasn’t worn off.

Rocky Dhir:

I was going to ask, does it ever get old where you’re like, “Oh, here we go again.” Does it ever happen?

Eunice Nakamura:

Maybe ask James. He’s been doing this a little bit longer than me, but not me.

Rocky Dhir:

And I’m not going to say his name for security purposes, but I’ve known your son, Eunice, for many years. Does he get to be the coolest kid on the baseball team because his mom works for the Rangers? Does he get actual bragging rights?

Eunice Nakamura:

Well, I think the team loves coming here. They play in the Little League World Series that we actually host all the teams here at the ballpark.

Rocky Dhir:

Oh, wow.

Eunice Nakamura:

Yeah. So they come and I’ve taken them down to the field and they’ve met a lot of the players. And so they just, I mean, they eat it up and the Rangers are so good about giving back to the kids. The players are great with them. And so they all have fun with it for sure.

Rocky Dhir:

That’s fantastic. So James, not to be outdone. Do you have any other connection to soccer besides this gig you’ve got? I mean, sounds like a pretty fun deal.

James O’Sullivan:

I grew up in Ireland and went to university in Manchester in the North of England. So yes, I’ve been a soccer fan forever, but it’s a dream come true wouldn’t be quite the right thing because I was told would I go do this? I wasn’t on my list of things to do, but it’s amazing. It’s a lot of fun to be around. It suits my personality. It’s a very, very day at work and it’s a nice setting. And you get to interact in a thing which interests other people, which is that not everyone has a job that other people want to ask you about what you do. There is some common ground that you can talk about. It’s fun to share, especially this year of all years with the World Cup coming, that the focus is definitely on us a

Rocky Dhir:

Little. And I wonder, being from the old country, being from … I assume you’re from the UK.

James O’Sullivan:

I’m from Ireland.

Rocky Dhir:

Oh, you’re from Ireland.

James O’Sullivan:

Don’t be dropping the UK on me now.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay. All right. So in that case, that makes it even more interesting question. Before you ever got involved with American soccer, what was your favorite team back home?

James O’Sullivan:

I’m a Glasgow Celtic and Manchester City from the ’90s when they were not the behemoth they are today.

Rocky Dhir:

You were country when country wasn’t cool effectively.

James O’Sullivan:

Absolutely.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay. Very good. So I want to know a little bit about how you got these gigs, because I’m sure there are lawyers listening who say, God, I’d love to do something like this. And there’s only so many teams that you can possibly go and work at. So James, we’ll start with you this time. Since I flubbed the whole England versus Ireland thing, I’m going to try to make up for this. So how exactly did you land this job?

James O’Sullivan:

Circuitously, I think is the best way of putting it. I was a-

Rocky Dhir:

That sounds like the name of a town in Ireland. I’ve been to circuitously. It’s a beautiful place. It’s a me

James O’Sullivan:

Place. Oh, he’s got the accent now. We’re in big trouble here.

Rocky Dhir:

Not a good accent. It’s just my version of it.

James O’Sullivan:

Absolutely. I’ll put my lucky charms away. I came to America as a classical musician, found myself teaching middle school choir in Irving. And I discovered after a very short period of time that I was not Mr. Holland. So I should probably go find another career and-

Rocky Dhir:

We’re aging ourselves with that reference.

James O’Sullivan:

Sadly, I think we are. But I thought other than being a musician, the law had always interested me and my grandfather in the north of England was a lawyer. So I went to law school and ended up falling sort of backwards into oil and gas through musical connections oddly and was working in the oil and gas industry for a number of years before I ended up doing some consulting work for a family in Dallas who were the Hunt family in-

Rocky Dhir:

The Hunt family. I was going to say, that’s probably my guess.

James O’Sullivan:

And through, again, largely musical connections there, I made friends and when they needed somebody to come on and help, they said, “Well, he likes kickball. We’ll give it to him if he wants it. ” I ran their oil and gas stuff and I did some of the soccer stuff on the side there for a few years. And then after COVID, they said, “Why don’t you move up to the stadium and just take on the soccer properties full-time?” I am sitting here in the stadium. The beer cooler is not 10 yards away.

Rocky Dhir:

Wow. Well, spoken like a true Irishman. We know where your priorities are. I got to ask, is it Guinness, Sam Adams? What kind of beer is it that you’re …

James O’Sullivan:

Oh, I’m a Guinness man, but Guinness in the United … We could have a whole podcast on the issues with Guinness in the United States, but our people are not here for that.

Rocky Dhir:

I think to do that when we’re going to have to have an actual panel discussion, it can’t just be one-on-one. We’re going to have to have a dissenting voice of some kind. That’s going to be an equal airtime kind of thing, otherwise we’ll get canceled. So I’ve known you for many, many years, and then out of nowhere you got this. To me, it seemed out of nowhere. Like, oh my God, I’m going to be GC for the Texas Rangers. And I remember reading that going, “Wait, what? How did this happen?” So I got to know, what did you do or what bet did you win to get this?

Eunice Nakamura:

Yeah, it really wasn’t on my bingo card, as they say. When I started out my career, and I think you know this, but I started out as a litigator in Dallas. And frankly, that was my career goal and ambition is to become a civil litigator. I did that in Dallas for a while, loved it. Still love litigation, although I’m not around it as much.

Rocky Dhir:

Saying litigation is a little bit like saying a lion is a cat. I mean, you were an absolute beast in the courtroom. So yeah, that’s what I always thought of you as.

Eunice Nakamura:

Well, that’s nice. That’s kind. But yeah, I was trucking along, litigating, having a lot of fun. And I got a call, and actually before I move on to the next jump, while I was litigating, my firm had represented the Rangers at that time. And so I did a short stint when the Rangers Council went on an extended leave on a secondment basis at the old ballpark where I did her job three days out of the week and then two days at my firm. And so that’s how I first was introduced to the Rangers and never thought anything of it. This was years and years ago and was litigating. I got a call from a recruiter who I had met through the bar association serving in different committees and whatnot. And she said, “I have an opening and I think you might be a good fit.

I know this GC very well. Would you be interested?” And I wasn’t really sure whether I was interested or not, but I’m always open to talking to people, especially in a firm, you always want to network, they could become potential clients, you just never know. So I said yes. And so I think the key was just saying yes at that time. It happened to be with a company in Dallas Hospitality Hotel Company. Blackstone had acquired them recently and I thought that would be a really good opportunity because Blackstone obviously has a really good reputation for buying, fixing and selling their portfolio companies. And so that’s when I got my first in- house gig and I really just fell in love with it. I was very fortunate that I had great mentors at that company that really taught me how to think and become an in- house lawyer and become a business partner to the business.

Because when you’re in a law firm, you don’t own the business issues, right? You give the advice, but at the end of the day, it’s your client, it’s not your business. And so I was there for about seven years, really loved it. And I had this thought that if I’m going to do this, I want to go all the way. And so I set this lofty goal for myself that when I turned 40, I would love to have my first GC gig. I turned 40. I got a call from a colleague who said, “There’s a general counsel role open with the Susan G. Comen Breast Cancer Foundation. You might be a good fit.” It’s like, “Well, I don’t really have any nonprofit experience, but again, I’m always open to talking to people. ” So I came and met with the CEO at the time. She had also come from the for- profit world and run publicly traded companies and said, “Look, this is also a corporation.

It happens to be a nonprofit corporation, but what we do is not any different in the sense that you have to earn revenue. It’s just what we do with the revenue goes to mission.” So anyway, that worked out. I worked at Susan G. Komen, was my first GC role, loved it, and was there for about seven years. And while I was there, the Ranger CFO, she actually sat on the Komen Finance Committee, and one of the minority owners of the Rangers also sat on Komen’s investment committee, so kind of stayed on their radar and then got the call and jumped at the chance. So that’s how I ended up here with the multi-sector background. But like I said, really wasn’t on my bingo card, but it’s really through the relationships and the people throughout my career.

Rocky Dhir:

You talk about multi-sector backgrounds. We need to take a quick break because I think James needs a Guinness from what I can tell. I’m getting this vibe from James. He’s like, “You can’t be making me sit this long, son.” We’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to hear from one of our sponsors. When we come back, we’re going to talk a little bit about the areas of law y’all deal with and what those are like and how as lawyers, you got yourselves prepared for that. So we’re going to come right back with James and Eunice in just a couple of seconds. Don’t go far. All right. We’re back with Eunice Nakamura and James O’Sullivan talking about sports law. We’re so lucky here in Texas to have a lot of great sports teams. And this year is special because we got the FIFA World Cup coming to North Texas, going all over the western hemisphere really, but we’re one of the stops.

And then of course, the Texas Ranger has been an institution and Eunice is their general counsel. So we’re going to take this opportunity to learn a little bit because I think as lawyers, we don’t oftentimes … There’s very few of us that really do sports law full-time, especially here in Texas. So you both talked a bit earlier about your roles coming here. There was litigation, oil and gas. I mean, you guys came from a variety of backgrounds, but what areas of law do you interact with every day now? How do you get prepared for that? Because if all I’ve ever done is riparian rights and now I’ve got to suddenly become a sports lawyer, I can see that being a little bit … That can be a little intimidating to some folks. So Eunice, we’ll start with you. What areas of law and how do you cope?

Eunice Nakamura:

I don’t think there are many areas of the law that we don’t deal with. Contracts, IP, employment, data privacy, construction, media, real estate. I frankly touch all of it. And so when they say you’re general counsel, in the truest sense, you truly become a generalist in so many areas of the law. And there’s no way you can be a subject matter expert in all of those areas of the law. So you really have to know what your resources are, who your subject matter experts are that you can lean on, but also you have to be six inches deep in a mile wide in the truest sense. And for us with Major League Baseball, we also have the support of the Major League Baseball lawyers. So most of the clubs have somewhere between one to five lawyers on average, but at the Major League level, they’ve got dozens of lawyers who act as support.

Rocky Dhir:

I did not know that. Okay. So you’ve got a whole nother legal team kind of quasi-in-house behind you.

Eunice Nakamura:

Yes, to some degree we rely on them, although we are independent entities. And so I think you have to, one, be a little bit dangerous in every area of the law, know enough to be dangerous, but also know when you need to reach out. When I joined, for example, I’m entering my second season here. We had launched our own regional sports network. I know nothing about media law or broadcast. That’s not my background. Obviously, when they hired me, they knew that. But who do you know that are experts in that area? So really partnering with them. But frankly, I think probably similar to James and my counterparts with other professional sports teams, there’s not an area of the law that we don’t touch.

Rocky Dhir:

I assume too, you’ve got to be willing to ask what some of the subject matter experts might think are very stupid basic questions. You can’t be afraid to ask because if somebody came to media law, I wouldn’t know the first thing. I’d be asking questions that for them would be very basic. I mean, is that a fear you just kind of had to get over and …

Eunice Nakamura:

Yeah, no, I don’t have any fear of asking dumb questions. That’s what my job is, frankly. And if I don’t ask dumb questions, I think you have to ask those basic dumb questions. That’s how you figure it out. And you have to figure it out quickly. We don’t have a lot of time. So you can’t pretend to know what you don’t know. In fact, you have to be humble and this job will humble you very quickly. So yeah, I’m not afraid to ask dumb questions. In fact, I ask it daily.

Rocky Dhir:

James, what about you? Same answer, I assume.

James O’Sullivan:

Yeah, very, very similar. There are a couple of nuances in soccer I think that are worth … I have the resources of all my colleagues across the 30 clubs, Major League Soccer who have lawyers, and some of them have many lawyers in their clubs, and they all come from different backgrounds, and we do lean on each other a lot for different things that some of us are good at, and no one ever wants to know about oil and gas, so I’m useless to everyone. But we also have a bunch of league lawyers, and we are technically a single entity in as we have a sort of single entity structure in soccer that’s very bizarre.

Rocky Dhir:

All of professional soccer is one big-

James O’Sullivan:

Major league soccer. The players, like our players who will take the field here tomorrow night and are going to whip Nashville. They are employees of Major League Soccer in New York City. We have a much more close relationship with the league than Major League Baseball. We are separate entities, but we’re not. Depends who you ask. This

Rocky Dhir:

Is kind of interesting. I didn’t know this. So we’re going to go down a little rabbit hole here. All right, I want to know about the structure. So with Eunice’s, I can understand, right? They’re separate entities and then they have this pool of resources at MLB that they can kind of lean on. With FC Dallas, you’re a separate entity, but then are you effectively leasing the players from Major League Soccer or …

James O’Sullivan:

They are assigned to us in a way. It behaves much like Manchester City or Glasgow Celtic or anyone else. We’re not writing their paychecks. We simply pay the league. The league pays them. It creates a slightly odd relationship in some ways, but it goes back to the issues with previous prior soccer leagues in the United States that failed miserably. They wanted a little more global control over what was happening. So this was the model they went with.

Rocky Dhir:

And is that true of the coaches and …

James O’Sullivan:

So the coaches are ours.

Rocky Dhir:

Okay.

James O’Sullivan:

There’s a million rabbit holes. We have a lower level team that we do employ the players for. We have two professional soccer teams here.

Rocky Dhir:

Very interesting. Okay. So in terms of how you got ready for this role, Eunice is not afraid to ask dumb questions. How did you prepare yourself for taking on all these multifaceted legal questions that were being thrown at you?

James O’Sullivan:

In many ways, the same. I’m not afraid to ask dumb questions. I don’t have an ego from that standpoint. I’m not pretending to know any of these things. I did have the advantage of five years of working close to the … I worked for the family office before I moved up to the stadium, and the lawyer I worked with there had been doing this for 20 years. And so I learned a lot of the sort of basics from him. So before I was on my own, I had had a long introductory period, but also in our organization here, there hadn’t had an in- house counsel at FC Dallas previously. And my role is not … I mean, legal, yes, but it’s more oversight and more general adult common sense. I’m here to make sure that things are running sensibly.

Rocky Dhir:

Is that your way of saying that I would be completely disqualified for such a job?

James O’Sullivan:

Well, if you bust out the Irish accents, yes, you will be disqualified immediately. But no, it was very much a case of this is an organization that is very broad reaching, has lots of different arms and having somebody reviewing the legalities was important and necessary, but also a general oversight of operations was a benefit. So I fit two roles.

Rocky Dhir:

While we’ve got you talking about the roles with the World Cup and with FIFA, I mean, that’s probably once in a lifetime, once in a career that that’s going to happen, right? I mean, it’s not slated to come back in our region probably. I don’t know if it’s ever slated to come back here again. So has that brought special issues that you just kind of had to gear up for?

James O’Sullivan:

100%. And while the Men’s World Cup will … Well, it’ll come back here when FIFA needs a payday, but the Women’s World Cup may come back here much sooner than that, which is all operated through FIFA. So I expect we’ll be dealing with FIFA some more, but it’s very different because FIFA, it’s a behemoth. It’s a totally global … It’s pretty much like dealing with a small country or not even a small country, quite a big country. They run everything, they have almost total control. So it’s a very interesting dynamic.

Rocky Dhir:

In terms of the legal issues that you face, are they also similar to what you’re already doing or have you had to face and learn a whole new set of challenges?

James O’Sullivan:

For starters, FIFA operates under European law, and I’m not a European lawyer. So there’s a lot of interesting …

Rocky Dhir:

But you’re from Europe. I mean, hello. I don’t understand this guy. First, I’m Irish and your accent is bad. And then he’s like, ” I’m not a European lawyer. “Okay, whatever. This is getting confusing. I’m clearly out of my depth with you too.

James O’Sullivan:

FIFA is coming to bring the largest sporting event in the world here and they are the boss and we are a very small part of that operation and the legalities flow from there.

Rocky Dhir:

We know FIFA, that’s been your special project probably over the last several years that you’ve had to gear up for. But Eunice, you’re still kind of a fledgling sports lawyer, if we want to call it that. So far, what’s been the biggest challenge you’ve faced being in- house with the Texas Rangers? I mean, they’ve had a couple of great seasons, so no complaints there, but as a lawyer, what’s been your biggest challenge?

Eunice Nakamura:

Yeah, I think it’s the issue that I mentioned earlier, which was the launch of our RSN. So the broadcast world, as you all might know, is very turbulent in many ways. In fact, I saw, or I heard an ad the other day that it’s so hard to watch TV these days because you have to have a subscription to this. You have to have a subscription to that if you want to watch this game or this show. And so I think just navigating the nascency of all of that has been challenging, especially not having a media law background or broadcast law background, but thankfully we’ve got world-class lawyers that help us navigate all of the challenges. But frankly, we’re one of few teams that have our own network, not just in Major League Baseball, but in professional sports. And so just having your own network and all of the pieces that go into that, it is a lot of moving parts and keeping up with that and all the changes and the regulatory requirements and the most favored nation statuses amongst all of the distributors, it’s a lot.

And so I would say for me, still being new, that has been the biggest challenge. Obviously, there are other challenges that pop up on a day-to-day basis, but I would say that’s been the biggest one.

Rocky Dhir:

If you’re allowed to talk about this or if you can’t talk about it, can you walk us through the media distribution angle? I don’t think most lawyers that are listening into this would necessarily have any background. And those that do probably know exactly what you’re talking about, but those that don’t, how does that work? And James, if you want to jump in too, when you’re talking about distribution rights, what are some of the moving parts that you as lawyers have to deal with?

Eunice Nakamura:

Well, I mean, you have to consider nowadays watching TV is not what it was 10, 20, 30 years ago. There’s linear television, there’s digital direct to consumer television. And so there’s all of these different segments and they don’t align and all of the different distributors want the best terms. And so they all negotiate the best terms and they want to make sure that your deals with other distributors are online. And so I think it’s keeping up with all of that is, frankly, it’s a challenge. And in my role, as I’ve become more acclimated here, there are not as many lawyers in this space, even within firms as you would think. It’s in each space. And so the lawyers that we do work with, they’re very knowledgeable, but there’s not a whole lot like you would think.

Rocky Dhir:

Interesting. James, are you seeing the same thing? I assume you’re dealing with the same challenges.

James O’Sullivan:

Yes, but Eunice is with baseball. She is America’s pastime. They’re a mainstay of American culture forever. Soccer is not that. Soccer is … MLS sits in such a unique place in American sports because it is the top tier of American soccer, but in terms of the global game, there are many huge soccer fans in America are not particularly fans of MLS. So the market you’re chasing is different. And we are based, as of the last couple of years, MLS was finally got out of the quagmire of everything Eunice was talking about where we had a million different distributors and it was, where were you going to find today’s game? And even I’d be like, “Oh my God, we’re on Twitter today.” It was terrible. And then Apple TV came in and said, “Okay, we’re going to take the whole thing and now everything, all our games are on Apple TV.”

Rocky Dhir:

Luckily, I had that subscription, so I won’t miss out.

James O’Sullivan:

And this year you will be able to watch that. Last year, you would’ve needed an additional subscription on top of your Apple subscription that goes away this year. So I know what you’ll be doing tomorrow night and you’ll be drinking a Guinness while you do it.

Rocky Dhir:

Watching Ted Lasso, just to get all geared up.

James O’Sullivan:

100%. But no, we live in an Apple dominated universe with minimal rights and in a market where we are chasing far smaller viewerships than baseball, I think.

Rocky Dhir:

Wow. We’re going down rabbit trails, but this is fascinating to kind of learn about and to see what you guys face. It’s a world I think many of us have not seen. I don’t know about you guys. I need a little break here because there’s just a lot to take in. I need to think this through. So we’re going to hear from one of our sponsors real quick. Give me a chance to take a breather, drink some water and kind of … I’m not a very bright person, so I need time to kind of process all this. So while I process, we’re going to hear from one of our sponsors. We’re going to come back and we’re going to talk a little bit about, for those of you that might be interested in getting into sports law, what you can do to get more involved, how you might make yourself known in this space.

So we’ll be right back. Stay tuned. We’re back folks. We’re talking sports law with two of the experts. We’ve got James O’Sullivan and Eunice Nakamura. We’re learning a lot of new stuff that I don’t think we knew before, but I want to step back for a second and talk about, for those of us that are interested in sports law after hearing about all this, what do you think is the best preparation for that? I mean, looking back, so James, we’ll start with you this time. If there was something you could have done back in law school to prepare yourself or maybe early in your career to prepare yourself for this role, what would it have been? I

James O’Sullivan:

Think that’s a very good question. I don’t know, and I get asked this question a lot, how can I get into sports law? And I think for most people, because I obviously fell in backwards, it wasn’t on my list. It seems Eunice is the same sort of way. I say you have to be front of mind when people need help. So if you stay around sports, if you find ways of maintaining your involvement, so many legal questions, we do touch absolutely everything, every area possible for insurance, slip and falls, contracts, real estate, we touch everything. And if you keep sports people in your life, some of those sports people are going to have a legal question at some time and you need them to think, “I know a lawyer, I know. ” And then suddenly you have your sports client or your first sports issue and you take it from there.

But for me, it’s connection. Oddly, as I mentioned earlier, musical connections have got me where I am today, but it was still knowing people. It was still maintaining relationships and investing in the relationships that did the most good.

Rocky Dhir:

It’s the soft power of the law as opposed to a specific class.

James O’Sullivan:

Yeah. They hate me when I say this, but I don’t feel like I missed out not being in a sports law society because I just don’t … I sort of come from the school of thought that sports law doesn’t exist. The widget we sell in our factory here is 11 guys running around kicking a ball, but I could be working in a Walmart and it would be many of the same issues.

Rocky Dhir:

Interesting. Okay. Eunice, how about you?

Eunice Nakamura:

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with James Moore. For me, having been in different sectors, whether it’s for- profit, nonprofit sports, being a general counsel means that you are a business partner to the business. So the most important asset is learning the business side of whatever business you want to get into, which means, like James said, it’s not just sports, it’s not baseball or soccer necessarily, right? It’s contracts, it’s employment. It’s all of those things that every corporation deals with. It’s the same issues for us. We just happen to be in the business of sports, but ultimately it’s the business. I think a couple of practical things, I too am not a member of SLA, which is the Sports Law Association. I think a lot of my colleagues are. Things like that are probably helpful to developing the networks and the relationships, but is it a pre-req?

Definitely not. Does it help because it helps you develop the relationships? Absolutely. Because I think the through line to me getting to this position is relationships. It’s about people hiring people. So I think always invest and nurture those relationships because you just never know. I will say as a law student or a young … I guess as a law student, I think it’s helpful to do internships or externships sports teams. We take on externs every semester from all the law schools here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and they learned a tremendous amount of practical hands-on experience, I think, more than they do in the classroom, frankly. So I think taking advantage of opportunities like that are helpful to the extent they exist, but I think developing that business acumen and nurturing your relationships are your top two recommendations that I would give.

Rocky Dhir:

Unice, it’s funny because I know your background, and I’m going to guess that your first love is still the courtroom. It’s litigation. I mean, that’s how I’ve always known you as a litigator. The typical path to becoming a general counsel is usually on the transactional side. That’s how most people get there. So James did oil and gas. He was doing a lot of transactional work. You were a litigator. So that’s not unheard of, but it is not the norm. So is there something that as a litigator, if people are litigators, are there skills they should be fostering that could translate over into the boardroom and into being better transactional partners?

Eunice Nakamura:

I think there’s actually a trend that more litigators are actually becoming general counsel in recent years than has been in the past. So that trend is definitely changing. I would say what helped me is when you’re a commercial litigator, you’re litigating over issues that transactional lawyers miss. To a large extent. So in that sense, you do have that lens through which you see both what the transactional lawyers saw and then on the back end of what could go wrong. And so it actually gives you additional insight. And I think that’s actually been an asset to me as I do a lot of real-time risk analysis on a daily basis of the transactions and the deals that we make. And so I think it’s really that business analytical skillset that will serve you well, whether you’re a litigator or a transactional lawyer. But again, I think the common thread there is the business acumen, whether you come from a litigation or transactional background.

Rocky Dhir:

And James, obviously having worked for the Hunt family and having done a lot of transactional work, you know the business side of it. Are there any aspects that kind of surprised you when you started doing more on the sports side?

James O’Sullivan:

Well, I think a lot of it is more … The surprise to me has been the level of the intersection between common sense and the law. As lawyers, we’re trying to assist the business. But when you’re in, certainly in my experience in this business in soccer where I’ll give an example, like on the broadcast deal, I’ll do broadcast agreements for our radio. And I don’t know how many people in the Metroplex are listening to an FC Dallas game on the radio. Five, 10? And so some of that comes into how much thought and worry do we need to put into this for what it is? For me, a lot of my job has been assessing overall things from a business standpoint. We can get really, really into this because there’s a lawyer in New York who lives and breathes these indemnity provisions in these, and that’s great.

Deciding how much bandwidth an organization like ours can give to the million things it’s doing, a lot of that is where my focus is.

Rocky Dhir:

We’re reaching that point where we got to wrap up soon, but I want to end with this question for each of you. And I’m going to let you guys decide who gets to go first. The question is, can you tell us a fun fact about your teams that you can reveal? It’s not breaking any confidences, but that we ordinary citizens, non-Irish, Guinness drinking people might not actually know about. I guess we’ll call it inside baseball. Do you guys have any of those that you can share with us?

Eunice Nakamura:

Well, I have two.

Rocky Dhir:

Oh, well then good. See, James, this is the problem. Eunice is, she’s a litigator. She’s trying to outdo the other side. That’s how this happened. I got two of them. Yeah.

Eunice Nakamura:

Well, these are two things that I didn’t know myself and I just thought they were fun. So the Rangers were the first Major League Baseball team to serve nachos in the ballpark in the 1970s.

Rocky Dhir:

And God bless you guys for doing that.

Eunice Nakamura:

Yep. So there’s that. I’m very thankful because I love nachos. Two, we are also the first Major League Baseball team, and maybe sports team, I’m not sure, to do the dot races, which Chuck Morgan started in the 1980s.

Rocky Dhir:

Those are huge. Yeah. Oh my. Wow. I thought a lot of the … It started with the Rangers?

Eunice Nakamura:

Yes.

Rocky Dhir:

Yes. I’ve seen that done at Wrigley Field before. I didn’t know that was done. Oh, all right. Texas does do it better. Hell yeah. Okay. There’s some pride there. All right, James, you’ve had two chances now to kind of think about your answer. So you better have a good one.

James O’Sullivan:

I’m going to have to give you two also. So obviously our club was founded by Lamar Hunt. Well, Lamar Hunt has pivotal, the very complicated story. Lamar Hunt is a very important character in soccer in the United States. When he started, opened his first team in the 1960s, it was the Dallas Tornado and they played in Orange Jerseys. That is in fact the reason why a team all the way over in Scotland, Dundee United plays in Orange Jerseys because, little known fact, the team that Lamar Hunt put together to play in the NASL in the 1960s was in fact Dundee United in different jerseys.

Rocky Dhir:

Wow.

James O’Sullivan:

So bizarre fact that nobody seems to know. And then my other interesting fact is that we have a gentleman working here. He’s the academy strength and conditioning coach for our young up and coming football players, whose father is a well-known footballer by the name of the late Pele.

Rocky Dhir:

No way.

James O’Sullivan:

Way.

Rocky Dhir:

Way cool. See, this is-

Eunice Nakamura:

I think he topped me.

Rocky Dhir:

I hate to say it, Eunice, but I think it’s good you went first. You don’t want to follow that. I mean, nachos are great, but Pele is kind of- You

James O’Sullivan:

Can’t cover Pele and Queso though.

Rocky Dhir:

ChatGPT could probably create a video of Pele eating nachos at the Ranger Stadium. So we’re going to work on that and then you guys will know enough about the distribution rights to get that out on every television in America. But this has been so much fun. Eunice Nakamura, James O’Sullivan, you guys have been amazing. Thank you for joining us today. And you basically took a time out and you spent some time with us, so thank you for that.

Eunice Nakamura:

Thank you, Rocky.

Rocky Dhir:

Very welcome. And of course, I want to thank you all for tuning in. I want to encourage you to stay safe, be well. If you like what you heard today, please rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts until next time. Keep your head in the game. I’m Rocky Dhir signing off for now.

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