Wolf&Grayson EditorialLegal teams are often cast as the final checkpoint before a deal can move forward. With that has come a long-standing perception that legal departments exist solely to protect the business rather than help create new opportunities. Peter Steckelman has spent much of his career in sports and entertainment challenging that assumption. “I never say no,” he says. “I always try to explain to folks what choices they’re going to make and what the potential consequences are.” As Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Tennis Channel, Steckelman operates at the intersection of sports media, content strategy, intellectual property, and growth.
He helps structure partnerships, unlock new revenue streams, protect brand assets, and identify white space that others overlook. For him, turning legal complexity into opportunity begins by rejecting the outdated stereotype of lawyers as the “department of no.” Effective strategic counsel helps businesses pursue new ideas and opportunities intelligently.
Steckelman points to brand development as one of the clearest examples. Building a defensible brand requires a more sophisticated intellectual property strategy for media companies, including visual branding and a stronger identity framework. Words on their own could easily be viewed as descriptive and nearly impossible to trademark and protect legally. However, “when you add an original creative logo to the words, design the logo specifically, and now identify your brand a certain way, all of a sudden you have a brand that you can protect,” he says. That combination of brand protection, trademark portfolio development, and creative execution transforms a descriptive concept into a valuable media asset.
Finding Value Others Leave Behind
That same mindset extends far beyond trademark strategy. Once a brand is protected, the next challenge is figuring out how to maximize the value of the content attached to it. In sports media, that often means navigating rights deals that many executives view as winner-take-all battles. Steckelman sees something different. “If one broadcaster has all the live tournament rights, the question becomes: what are they not doing?” Steckelman says. That could include replay rights, archive content, international distribution opportunities, sponsorship activations, or short-form digital packages. These overlooked assets can create meaningful growth opportunities through smarter content acquisition and tailored licensing agreements.
When competitors focus exclusively on premium live rights, they often ignore adjacent opportunities hidden inside broader contracts. That is where sophisticated deal negotiation creates leverage. Rather than competing for the most obvious assets, Steckelman focuses on uncovering underexploited ones. “There’s a lot of things that just take a little creative whiteboarding to figure out how and where that opportunity lives.”
Building New Businesses Through Legal Infrastructure
That same framework helped shape Tennis Channel’s expansion into pickleball through PBTV (Pickleball TV). While many media executives saw pickleball as a trend, Steckelman approached it as a structural opportunity. First came identifying who controlled the rights ecosystem. Then came evaluating how those rights could support long-term growth. The company analyzed the fragmented pickleball landscape and identified the Professional Pickleball Association as a critical stakeholder. From there, multiple deal structures were evaluated, including partnerships, acquisitions, joint ventures, and traditional licensing arrangements.
Without legal clarity, none of it would have moved forward. “If you don’t know who has the rights to the league, the sport, the media collection of those audiovisual rights, then you can’t build a channel.” This is where risk mitigation becomes an offensive strategy. Instead of simply reducing exposure, legal teams can create scalable frameworks that allow businesses to expand faster and more confidently.
The Next Frontier in Sports Media
As sports rights continue to fragment across streaming services, free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels, and social platforms, Steckelman believes executives are focused on the wrong problem. The challenge will be addressing consumer confusion. Audiences increasingly struggle to determine where sports content lives, creating a major opportunity for media companies that can simplify discovery. “The strategic opportunity is because of all that fragmentation, people are scattered,” he says.
He argues that sports companies should borrow from entertainment platforms that heavily market exclusivity and availability. Consistent visibility, not event-specific promotion, may become the next major differentiator. That will require legal teams to play a larger role in structuring rights agreements that allow for broader promotion, while protecting partner relationships. “The word ‘yes’ matters,” Steckelman says. “Yes, I can promote. Yes, I can market.” As media ecosystems grow more complex, the executives creating the most value may not be the loudest dealmakers. They may be the ones quietly translating legal complexity into strategic advantage.
