John is General Counsel of Newcastle United Football Club and a practising solicitor with over 25 years of experience. He acts as Board secretary to the portfolio of companies within the NUFC group and focuses on company, commercial, intellectual property and football-related legal matters, including transactional and regulatory issues, liaising with the Club’s key stakeholders from ownership to governing bodies. In private practice, he acted for a range of organisations operating internationally within the sports sector, including regulatory and funding bodies, professional leagues and clubs, athletes, players and intermediaries.

What are the most significant cases and/or transactions that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Due to the nature of the roles, much of the work we do or support on we cannot reference. In terms of those we now can, we have supported the Club in matters ranging from the acquisition of the Strawberry Place land adjacent to St James’ Park, which the Club has since developed into a popular 3,000 capacity fanzone, the filming and distribution of a 4-part Amazon documentary, bringing live music back to St James’ Park with the hosting of five record-breaking Sam Fender stadium concerts over two summers, overseas tours to KSA, USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia, partnering once more with longstanding technical kit partner, adidas, and all incoming and outgoing football transfer deals.

What do you see as an opportunity or risk over the next six months?

We are always looking at ways to improve efficiency and adopt practices which are conducive to the Club’s operations, since it is a multi-faceted business with global interests, reach and profile. As the use of AI becomes more prevalent in business generally, I’m very interested in seeing how AI and other industry-specific tools develop to improve efficiency across the niche sports legal sector; particularly certain aspects of football administration and contracting. We are exploring ways in which this could assist our legal service provision while, fundamentally, maintaining the required standards and that all-important human touch that only a strong in-house team can deliver. Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting? I like to travel to games, home and away, and have been very fortunate to visit a lot of amazing places with the Club in recent years – from France, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Germany, to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and even Azerbaijan recently. It’s something I’m very grateful for and don’t take for granted, since it is a privilege to support the Club and team this way. Looking back, in private practice and sticking with the NUFC connection, I helped ex-Newcastle United player, Robbie Elliott, to organise his ‘Bike for Bobby’ 3,500-mile charity cycle ride challenge in aid of The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation. It took the riders from Lisbon to Newcastle over 25 days, visiting every club Sir Bobby managed. It took a year to plan, during which I advised on corporate structure, tax efficiency, insurance, risk management, independent film production and distribution, sponsorship contracts, plus regulatory clearances for travel and filming across six countries. I also love working with grassroots sport, so advising The FA and then The Football Foundation on the national Parklife football hubs project to increase artificial turf pitch use throughout England was something I really enjoyed.

What do you think are the most important attributes for a modern in-house counsel to possess?

Be flexible and available; unexpected things can happen all the time, especially in sport, so always try to remain objective and keep your focus. I try as far as I can to be prepared to roll with it and adapt when I have to. There’s always a way through! It’s also important to think commercially and be pragmatic with your advice. You want to protect your organisation, while placing your internal clients in a suitably informed position on the legal issues, always in plain English. That’s what your colleagues will appreciate.