Big Law firms are deepening their ties to the sports world, and they are doing it through marketing and networking events rather than court filings alone. According to Bloomberg Law, Sidley Austin has found ways to market itself alongside athletes and sporting events as its sports and entertainment practice has grown.
The details are familiar to anyone who reads a gala seating chart. Yvette Ostolaza, Sidley's management committee chair, has interviewed pro football's Eli Manning and Emmitt Smith at firm events. The firm also sponsors the Orange Bowl in Miami, where two of its leading sports lawyers, Irwin Raij and Charles, are based, per the column by Roy Strom published Oct. 22, 2026. The retrieved portion of the column is truncated, so the second lawyer's full name and further details are not verified here.
For an events desk, this is a recognizable shift. A firm hosting the talent and sponsoring a marquee event puts its own name in the room where deals circulate, as Sidley's example illustrates. Anyone who has followed how events work as business venues will see the logic immediately: the hospitality is the marketing, and the guest list is the product.
Why are law firms borrowing the gala playbook?
Because the gala playbook works. A sponsorship or a firm-hosted interview puts decision-makers and celebrities in one room with the firm's name on it. The Bloomberg Law column's stated topic is Big Law's expansion into sports-related marketing and networking events, with Sidley Austin as its example; the retrieved evidence documents Sidley's activities specifically. The mechanics are the same ones that power any benefit evening: a named host, a headline guest, and a venue that signals seriousness.
What is different is the purpose. A charity gala raises money. A firm's sports event raises relationships. The athletes on stage are not there to fund anything; they are there because their names draw the clients, leagues and media executives a sports practice wants to meet. From twenty years of producing such rooms, the tell is simple: watch who is seated at the host's tables, not who is on the stage. For related coverage, see How Do Charity Auctions Actually Raise Money At A Gala.
What does an Orange Bowl sponsorship actually buy?
A named sponsorship at a major college football game buys visibility, but the Bloomberg Law report suggests the value Sidley is chasing runs deeper. According to the column, the firm sponsors the Orange Bowl in Miami, where two of its leading sports lawyers, Irwin Raij and Charles, are based.
It also buys context. Sports work is a relationship business, and a stadium sponsorship lets a firm host clients in a setting that feels like a privilege rather than a pitch. The same calculation that puts a luxury brand's name on a galas circuit applies here, with one difference: a law firm is selling judgment, so the event must look understated even when it is expensive.
Is the athlete interview a new kind of firm event?
It is a borrowed format, and an effective one. Ostolaza interviewing Eli Manning and Emmitt Smith at firm events follows the template of conference-fireside chats and benefit-program interviews: a senior figure from the host institution questions a famous guest, and the audience leaves with the host's name attached to the memory. The Bloomberg Law column presents these interviews as part of how Sidley markets itself alongside athletes.
The format's quiet advantage is control. The host picks the questions, the room and the guest list. Nothing is left to a reporter's framing. That is why institutions from film festivals to law firms have moved toward owning their own stages rather than renting someone else's, a shift readers of entertainment news coverage will recognize from the festival and premiere world. We covered a connected angle in How Film Festival Accreditation Actually Works.
What should event watchers take from this?
Three things. First, in Sidley's case, a firm's events put it in the same sponsorship and hospitality space that luxury brands and media companies have long occupied. Second, the growth of a practice group, in Sidley's case its sports and entertainment practice, is being advertised through events, which means the event calendar itself has become a business signal. Third, the Bloomberg Law column's stated subject is Big Law's expansion into sports-related marketing and networking events, though the evidence retrieved documents only Sidley's example.
The open question is measurement. Sponsorships and firm-hosted interviews are easy to announce and hard to audit. Without published figures on what a sponsorship costs or what business it returns, the reader is left with the same gap that runs through much of the events economy: the room looks like success, and only the host knows the ledger. What the evidence establishes is the direction of travel; what it does not yet establish is the return.
