Ex-Paramount Legal Exec Joins New Sports Streaming Service (1)

Venu Sports, a new live streaming sports service joint venture backed by a trio of media industry titans, has hired David Hillman as its first chief legal officer, the company said in a statement.

Hillman heads to Venu after more than a decade at Paramount Global and its predecessors and after Paramount, once known as ViacomCBS, rejected a deal to sell itself to Skydance Media. Paramount’s top lawyer, Christa D’Alimonte, is also poised to depart, Bloomberg News reported late Tuesday.

In his new role Hillman oversees all legal matters at Venu, which will offer potential viewers both college and professional sports at a price point that it expects to be less than a subscription to most cable television packages.

Venu, which is preparing to launch in the fall, was created earlier this year by The Walt Disney Co., Fox Corp., and Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. The Justice Department is conducting an antitrust review of the transaction amid concerns it could hurt consumers, competitors, and sports leagues.

Hillman joined Paramount in 2012 after serving as the top lawyer for radio network Westwood One Inc. In his most recent position as a senior legal executive at the New York-based company, he was general counsel for CBS Sports, CBS News, and its stations and broadcast operations businesses.

His duties involved a lead role in negotiating “key strategic content agreements with programming partners, sports leagues, and talent,” Venu said.

Hillman’s first role at Paramount, then called CBS Corp., was general counsel for Simon & Schuster. Paramount sold its book publishing arm last year for $1.6 billion in cash to KKR & Co. after a prior deal involving Bertelsmann SE’s Penguin Random House was blocked by a federal judge on antitrust grounds.

Hillman was legal chief for Simon & Schuster between 2012 and 2015, a time during which the business was facing antitrust issues related to price-fixing.

In May, Venu was announced as the name of the new venture, whose new chief executive is Peter Distad, a former senior television executive at Apple Inc.

Almost immediately following the disclosure about its streaming sports plans ahead of the Super Bowl in February, smaller rival FuboTV Inc. filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery, claiming the three media giants are unlawfully combining forces to destroy its business.

Court filings show that Disney, which owns ABC and ESPN, is being represented in the FuboTV litigation by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Fox, owner of Fox Sports, has retained Dechert. Weil, Gotshal & Manges is advising TNT Sports and TBS owner Warner Bros. Discovery. Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick, a Washington-based litigation boutique, is counsel to FuboTV in the case.