Liberty Media, Live Nation Legal Leaders Got Pay Boosts in 2022

Liberty Media Corp. and Live Nation Entertainment Inc. have disclosed the pay packages of executives overseeing law departments that have been busy bringing on lawyers to address new business challenges.

Renee Wilm, chief legal officer for Liberty Media Corp., earned more than $2.5 million in total compensation last year in her role as chief legal and administrative officer for Liberty Media, up from the nearly $2.3 million she received in 2021, according to a proxy statement.

She is also the top lawyer for three other companies—Liberty Broadband Corp., Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings Inc., and Qurate Retail Inc.—in billionaire John Malone’s media empire. Wilm received more than $1 million in total compensation from Liberty Broadband, as well as $506,200 and $136,000 from Qurate and TripAdvisor, respectively, filings show.

West Chester, Pa.-based Qurate Retail owns television shopping network QVC and e-commerce company Zulily. Liberty TripAdvisor is the parent company of online travel platform TripAdvisor Inc.

Liberty Media is also the largest shareholder in Live Nation, a Beverly Hills, Calif.-based concert and live events giant that has faced antitrust scrutiny in recent months over its ticketing subsidiary Ticketmaster Entertainment LLC.

Live Nation general counsel Michael Rowles received more than $7.1 million in total compensation during 2022, up from $1.1 million in the prior year, the company’s proxy statement shows.

The bulk of Rowles’s compensation came from nearly $5.5 million in stock awards. He owns about $13 million in Live Nation stock, according to Bloomberg data. The company also paid him $1.6 million in cash last year, a sum evenly split between his base salary and bonus.

Rowles and Live Nation didn’t respond to requests for comment. Wilm didn’t respond to a comment request.

Liberty Media

Wilm is working with lawyers from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and O’Melveny & Myers on a plan to split off Liberty Media’s ownership of Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves into a tracking stock, per securities filings.

Wilm is also now chief executive of Las Vegas Grand Prix Inc., a Formula One racing event set to take place later this year, a Liberty Media spokesman said.

Liberty Media’s Formula One, advised by Las Vegas-based McDonald Carano on its upcoming Grand Prix, recently hired associate general counsel Gregory Riches to help run that event. A job listing for the position posted by legal recruitment firm Major, Lindsey & Africa said it reports to Formula One’s general counsel, Sacha Woodward Hill, who also works closely with Wilm.

This month Tamar Stanley, a partner at Baker Botts, joined Liberty Media as senior vice president of tax after serving as a legal adviser to the suburban Denver-based company. Wilm was a former senior partner at Baker Botts before Liberty Media hired her in 2019. Stanley represented Liberty Media-controlled Sirius XM Holdings Inc. on its acquisition that same year of Pandora Media Inc.

Live Nation

Rowles joined Live Nation in 2006 and played a key role in handling the company’s acquisition of Ticketmaster in 2010.

He saw his employment agreement with Live Nation extended through 2027, a deal that raises his base salary to $1.1 million, according to the company’s proxy.

Live Nation announced in February its hire of former outside counsel Daniel Wall, a veteran litigator who retired as an antitrust partner at Latham & Watkins to be its new executive vice president for corporate and regulatory affairs.

Live Nation also hired Stephanie Lamoureaux, a former global head of legal operations at Block Inc., last year as a senior director of legal operations.

Thousands of Taylor Swift fans excoriated Ticketmaster late last year after being unable to complete their orders for the singer’s New Eras concert tour. Live Nation saw a senior executive summoned to Capitol Hill to address the fiasco, and the company pledged to do better for customers after the ordeal.