DLA Piper is pleased to announce that Tom Ara, co-chair of the firm’s Entertainment Transactions and Entertainment Finance practices, and Benjamin Mulcahy, chair of the firm’s National Advertising team, have been named to The Hollywood Reporter’s 2021 Power Lawyers list highlighting the 100 top attorneys in Hollywood.
The publication noted Ara’s work with Apple and TikTok on their original content initiatives, as well as his role in a number of major deals, including ZASH’s acquisition of Lomotif, and highlighted Mulcahy’s representation of Amazon in acquiring distribution rights to the NFL’s Thursday Night Football games package.
Ara is chief outside counsel to numerous successful media and entertainment companies who view him as a trusted legal and business advisor. He is a noted practitioner who handles complex project and syndicated entertainment financing transactions, domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions of media companies and assets, and other high-value entertainment transactions. Ara’s practice spans the globe, from Europe to the Middle East to Asia. In addition to this recent recognition by The Hollywood Reporter, Ara has recently been recognized as a “Dealmaker” and “Legal Impact” honoree by Variety and as a Sports and Entertainment Trailblazer by the National Law Journal. He has also been cited for his extensive experience in Asia, both as a lawyer and as a Trustee of the prestigious US-Asia Institute.
Mulcahy represents major film studios, broadcast and cable television networks, retailers, prominent website operators, major consumer brands and their agencies in all aspects of sports marketing, entertainment marketing and interactive marketing, as well as in structuring and negotiating virtual reality, gaming, eSports and innovative branded entertainment initiatives and navigating the rights of stakeholders and the ever-changing laws that affect how campaigns are activated and content is distributed across all media. For the fifth year in a row, he was also recently ranked by Chambers USA at the Nationwide level in the advertising practice area and was recently named for the fifth time to Variety‘s Dealmakers Impact Report in recognition of his successful contributions to entertainment deal making.
DLA Piper’s market-leading international team of media, sport and entertainment lawyers, located throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, advises on finance, borrowing, investment and corporate issues, production and rights acquisitions, exploiting media rights, staging and exploiting live sports and other events, intellectual property protection and enforcement, regulatory and administrative issues, antitrust and competition law, stadium and arena development and on the resolution of disputes.
