Craig Sperling

Craig represents clients on a wide variety of complex licensing, technology, commercial, and strategic transactions. Craig has particular experience working on matters at the convergence of media, entertainment, and technology. 

In the media space, Craig advises on content acquisition and distribution, licensing, strategic partnerships and joint ventures, corporate transactions, and intellectual property protection and exploitation. His experience includes leading clients through digital transformations, from legacy to cutting-edge, digital-first models.

In the technology sector, Craig represents established and emerging growth companies across multiple industries on technology, commercial, and corporate transactions. He advises clients on intellectual property licensing, development, commercialization, outsourcing, and technology and intellectual property aspects of mergers and acquisitions and debt and equity financings. He provides clients with general corporate counseling and outside general counsel services.

Craig also counsels mission-driven organizations on policy, governance, and member relations, and negotiates and drafts grant and sponsorship agreements.

In addition to his experience at leading law firms, Craig served in high-level positions at two prominent media brands. As Deputy General Counsel at PBS, Craig managed the legal and business affairs teams, counseled senior management and the Board of Directors on legal and business matters, and led teams working on the most impactful projects and issues facing public broadcasting. At Discovery, Craig partnered with the Affiliate Sales team negotiating deals for distribution of the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, and other networks. This diverse in-house experience gives Craig insight into the needs of corporate executives, in-house counsel, and other stakeholders, and provides him with a unique perspective on their legal and business challenges and how to solve them.

Representative Matters

• Represents content owners and distributors on the licensing and distribution of television and cable channels and other content across all platforms, including linear and on-demand via cable, satellite, digital multicast, and streaming over vMVPDs, AVOD, FAST, connected TVs, and other over-the-top (OTT) platforms.
• Structures, negotiates, and drafts a variety of agreements for content production, development, acquisition, digital advertising, licensing, music rights, and branding.
• Counsels on the structure and launch of new services, such as the launch of a nationally distributed multicast channel and a video-on-demand service, including program acquisition, rights clearances, and distribution strategy.
• Represents clients on strategic partnerships and joint ventures.
• Advises media, technology, software, biotech, transportation, financial services, and government contracts clients on complex technology and commercial transactions, including software-as-a-service (SaaS) agreements, trademark licenses, master service agreements, statements of work, value added reseller agreements, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreements, vendor agreements, and outsourcing transactions.

Professional Experience

• Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
• Director, Legal Affairs, Discovery Inc.

Affiliations

• District of Columbia Bar, Arts, Entertainment, Media and Sports Law Section
  • Co-Chair, Steering Committee (2013-2019)
• Greater Washington Board of Trade
  • Executive Leadership Roundtable (2017-2022)
• Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA)
  • Co-Chair, Mass Media Committee (2024-Present)

Recognitions

• Named to Law360's Media & Entertainment Editorial Advisory Board (2024)
• Recognized in The Legal 500 US in Telecom and Broadcast: Regulatory and Telecom and Broadcast: Transactional (2023)