Frank brings over three decades of experience leading and advising professional sports organizations and their partners and stakeholders at the highest levels nationally and globally on complex legal, financial, media, technology, and governance matters.
Frank spent 15 years with the National Football League (NFL), most of it as head of business affairs for (and a direct report to) Commissioner Paul Tagliabue and President Neil Austrian. He ended his NFL career in 2008 as head of media strategy for NFL Network founding CEO Steve Bornstein.
During his tenure as the NFL's Senior Vice President, Business Affairs, Frank served as principal counsel to the NFL's Finance, Broadcasting, New Media, and NFL Enterprises Committees, and was also actively and deeply involved in key roles in the NFL's collective bargaining relationships and negotiations, especially as to salary cap matters.
In his business affairs role, Frank worked closely with Broadcast Committee Chairmen Pat Bowlen (former Denver Broncos owner) and Robert Kraft (New England Patriots Owner) and was a leading staffer in the structuring, negotiation, and bidding process for, the League's television and new media agreements in 1994, 1997–98, 2000, 2002, and 2004–05, and the subsequent administration of those contracts —deals that in many ways reshaped the modern sports media ecosystem
Frank also worked closely with then-Finance Committee Chairmen Tom Benson (Former New Orleans Saints owner) and Al Lerner (former Cleveland Browns owner) to implement and adopt some of the League's most significant finance, debt, and ownership policies and matters, including debt ceiling and governance policies that secured the NFL an A credit rating; expansion; ownership transfers; club debt financings; the League's structured credit facilities for member clubs; and stadium financing support through the NFL's G-3 construction support program, for which Frank was one of the principal staff architects and rating agency presenters, working closely with then-Finance Committee Chairman Lerner.
After leaving the NFL in 2008, Frank was a co-founder of Scalar Media Partners, along with former NFL CFO Tom Spock and cable industry pioneer and Comedy Channel founder Art Bell. At Scalar, Frank advised American and international sports organizations and teams, college athletics programs and conferences, and technology companies, with particular focus on media strategy, governance, labor issues, sponsorship strategies, and player performance data gathering, analysis, and exploitation.
Frank has a particular interest and expertise in sports technology, having worked on the NFL Next Gen Stats program first at the NFL (developing the intellectual property foundation of the program) and later on behalf of the vendor chosen by the NFL to implement the program. He subsequently co-founded a tracking company that sought to productize technology developed by the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany for use by the National Hockey League, and worked with fellow NFL alumni in productizing and marketing next-generation coach to player communications systems.
Before joining the NFL, Frank was a partner at Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C., where he advised public and private companies on communications, corporate, and insolvency-related matters across a broad range of industries, including broadcasting and telecommunications. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge William E. Doyle of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Frank taught Sports Economics and Sports Facility Finance for nine years at NYU's Tisch Institute for Global Sport, is a frequent lecturer in sports law and sports business classes at prominent graduate schools, and is a frequent speaker on sports law, media, and entertainment industry topics at conferences and industry events.
Education
J.D., Harvard Law School
A.B., Harvard University