About

Christian Genetski joined FanDuel, a web-based fantasy sports game with six million registered users, as chief legal officer in January 2015, as the first in-house counsel. Over time, he built a first-class team of lawyers and government affairs professionals from scratch. Listing this as one of the most significant changes he’s made to the workings of the legal department, Genetski admits: ‘I’m proud of the fact that our legal group is consistently recognised as smart, business savvy, and practical by the business teams, and has a very strong relationships with each aspect of the business’. For the preceding 3.5 years he’d served as senior vice president and general counsel of the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the US Trade Association for the video game industry, which involved him managing all legal and policy work for the association. During his time at FanDuel he has crafted and managed the execution of the company and industry’s successful response to a high-profile PR and regulatory crisis that posed an existential threat in 2015-16, which Genetski says ‘resulted in a massive 2.5 year effort that so far has passed laws in over 15 states creating a new regulatory regime for our business category’. His calm stewardship under intense pressure has served him well over the years, enabling him to lead key negotiations and mergers with the company’s chief rival, and subsequent antitrust challenges posed to the company. ‘I believe that these and other experiences have helped me develop a greater ability to remain (and convey) calm and sound judgment under pressure, focus on efficiently tackling one challenge at a time, build and sustain trust with key constituencies, and empower and enable a talented team behind me to succeed’ he says. Prior to this role, he spent a decade in private practice across three law firms, Kirkland & Ellis, Sonnenschein (now Dentons), and a boutique internet and technology law firm he co-founded called ZwillGen. His practice focused on representing technology clients including some of the most prominent video game publishers, social media, and internet messaging companies in the country. This saw him work on a wide range of counselling and litigation issues including privacy, security, intellectual property, litigation and compliance. Prior to working in private practice he served as a federal prosecutor in the US Department of Justice Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section. Genetski began his career as an associate in King & Spalding’s IP and technology practice.