Profile
Paul Sarker represents clients ranging from established industry leaders to emerging players across a wide spectrum of practice areas within entertainment, sports, media, and the blockchain. His experience includes mergers, acquisitions and other significant corporate transactions, television distribution (broadcast, cable, linear, SVOD, AVOD, FAST), digital content & new media, NFTs, generative art, content licensing, business affairs, production, live events, music, advertising, copyright, sponsorships, rights acquisitions, and guild matters.
Paul has broad in-house and law firm experience negotiating, structuring, and drafting agreements. His experience gained from working at a large media company provides him with a practical, business-minded perspective in addition to his legal training. Paul is committed to leveraging his skills and knowledge to identify opportunities to create value for his clients as well as anticipate and minimize risks and preserve client control in the rapidly-evolving industry.
Paul provides legal service tailored to his client’s specific goals, timing, and needs, to swiftly and effectively evaluate alternative approaches and make informed decisions. Paul leverages his interdisciplinary skill-set across several industries within entertainment (music, new media, television, and distribution) to craft unique strategies and compromises to novel problems.
Paul is passionate about improving South Asian representation and protecting the environment and is a member of the executive board of SABANY, Harlem Grown and the Greenberg Traurig Green Team.
Paul also created and hosts the top 25-Apple entertainment news podcast, Better Call Paul, which is a weekly show that discusses the business and legal sides behind the scenes of Hollywood, sports and entertainment.
Concentrations
- Television distribution agreements including cable, retransmission consent, and evolving technologies such as OTT, TVE, SVOD, AVOD, FAST, and DTC.
- Corporate media transactions such as mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, capital raises, and divestures
- Intellectual property creation and monetization,
- Recording, soundtrack, composer, and performance agreements
- Advertising and content monetization
- Talent representation
- Digital media licensing (podcasts, music services, SVOD) and business affairs
- Non-fungible tokens (licensing, authentication, linking with physical goods) and virtual communities
- Esports and gaming
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning (generative art)
Capabilities
Experience
- Advising media networks in their evaluation of, bids for and ultimately, the purchases of and/or combinations with other large media companies.
- Representing content producers in their production and distribution deals.
- Advising operators of brick-and-mortar venues in exploiting new revenue models.
- Representing funds in their acquisition of media assets including valuation and navigating regulatory approval.
- Advising professional sports teams in their corporate transactions, distribution agreements, media rights and direct to consumer products.
- Drafting and negotiating affiliation agreements for independent networks and retransmission consent agreements for broadcast stations.
- Representing NFT collectives and brands in licensing their intellectual property via tokens and expanding their portfolios.
- Drafting content licenses, composer agreements, soundtrack agreements, performing rights organization licenses for digital subscription platforms.
- Representing advertising agencies and brands in negotiating and executing advertising campaigns.
- Associate Principal Counsel, Business and Legal Affairs, Marvel Entertainment & Marvel Studios, 2009-2015
Recognition & Leadership
- Team Member, a Law360 “Media & Entertainment Practice Group of the Year,” 2022
- Vice President-Sponsorship, South Asian Bar Association New York
- Member, Young Professionals Board, Harlem Grown
Credentials
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J.D., cum laude, New York University School of Law
- Senior Staff Editor, Environmental Law Journal
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B.S., Duke University
- Founder and President, The Duke Entrepreneur
- Robertson Scholar
- New York
- California