Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves, the host of Tuesday night’s All-Star Game, may be in fourth place in the National League East, but they’re close to the first tier when it comes to pay for their in-house legal chief.
The team disclosed in its most recent proxy statement filed in April that chief legal officer Gregory Heller earned more than $1.8 million in total compensation last year. The Braves are publicly traded following their July 2023 separation from Liberty Media Corp. into a standalone entity called Atlanta Braves Holdings Inc., providing a rare window into what a sports team’s top lawyer earns.
Heller’s compensation also reflects the breadth of his portfolio and that of his employer, which has a hand in much more than fielding a professional ballclub.
“It’s not fair or even accurate to call Greg a ‘team counsel’ at this point,” said John Cooper, Heller’s predecessor with the Braves, in an email about his friend and former colleague. “He manages legal work for the most successful real estate development in sports, is the chief legal officer of a public company, is a leader among his peers within professional sports, and in his spare time oversees legal issues for the most professionally and successfully run club in Major League Baseball.”
Heller, who is in his 25th season as Braves legal counsel, didn’t respond to requests for comment. Nor did the Braves or Liberty Media. Heller’s 2024 compensation was made up of nearly $1.2 million in cash—including $800,000 in annual base salary—and $550,000 in stock awards.
An employment agreement between Heller and the Braves states that his base salary will rise $25,000 per year through 2027, when he will earn $875,000. Heller’s 2024 total compensation puts him higher than 16 players on the Braves payroll this year, according to contract data collected by Spotrac.
A canvassing of a handful of in-house attorneys in the sports world, including those familiar with the inner-workings of MLB, a league whose 29 other franchises are privately held entities, shows that Heller’s pay puts him among the elite for executive compensation for a specific team. The lawyers requested anonymity in discussing the pay package of a peer who has spent more than two decades working for the Braves and their corporate predecessors.
As a matter of comparison, Heller’s base salary is double that of the $400,000-$450,000 salary range recently listed for a new general counsel for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, who are seeking a successor to their former legal chief David Kelly, who left the club earlier this year. One lawyer said Heller’s pay is more “reflective of how his role has expanded exponentially” in recent years.
Some franchises have given equity to their executives, but doing so remains extremely rare, said another sports industry lawyer. Equity awards for public company legal chiefs remain standard and Heller’s compensation—considering the Braves’ $3 billion market capitalization—appears less exciting in comparison with the remuneration of legal chiefs at similarly sized companies, the lawyer said. The Braves are also now more than just a team, having joined a growing number of sports franchises to have diversified their business, thus making the role of MLB’s sole public company legal chief more complicated.
Changing Business
Heller joined the Braves in 2007, securing his “dream job” at just 35, according to an interview he gave an Atlanta-based legal publication that year. He succeeded Cooper, now the general counsel for TKO Group Holdings Inc.’s World Wrestling Entertainment. Cooper and Heller had previously worked for media mogul Ted Turner’s Turner Broadcasting System Inc., which owned the Braves and other sports assets and was sold in 1996 to Time Warner Inc.
Liberty Media paid $450 million to buy the Braves in 2007 from Time Warner, leading to Heller’s switch to the team from the sports division of TBS’s cable networks. Cooper and Heller used their time at TBS to bolster skills that would prove beneficial in the trajectory of their careers. Within the last decade Heller had a key role helping the Braves construct a new stadium, Truist Park, and build a $1 billion mixed-use real estate development around it called The Battery.
Cooper added that on top of it all Heller is a “great husband” to his wife, Krista, and an “engaged father” to four children.
The path of the Braves to public ownership led the club to engage with more lawyers and accountants, the team’s president Derek Schiller told Bloomberg Television last year. BakerHostetler has been a longtime legal adviser to the Braves when it comes to litigation, while DLA Piper has represented the team on real estate matters. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz counseled the Braves and the team’s chairman and CEO Terry McGuirk—who also worked at TBS—last year on corporate governance issues related to the club’s management gaining greater control of the Braves from Liberty Media billionaire John Malone.
Liberty Media has been reshaping its management and organizational structure,
in addition to spinning off the Braves and other holdings. The company did the same with home shopping network QVC Group Inc., which disclosed in May that its general counsel Eve DelSoldo will take over top legal duties from Renee Wilm, who stepped down to focus on her broader C-suite role at Liberty Media.
Formula One, the auto racing giant also owned by Liberty Media, this month completed its nearly $4 billion acquisition of a motorcycle racing circuit after naming a new legal chief this year in former chief corporate counsel Adam Babiker. The London-based Babiker took over from F1’s longtime legal chief Sacha Woodward Hill, who left the organization late last year.
As for the Braves, Heller now leads a growing in-house legal staff of more than a half-dozen individuals—more than any other club in the big leagues.
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