Legal is typically consulted when a deal is nearly done. The terms are negotiated, the commercial logic is settled, and the counsel receives a document to validate rather than a decision to shape. By that point, the only answers available are approval or an expensive renegotiation of terms both parties have already relied on. Peter Steckelman, most recently Senior Vice President of Business and Legal Affairs at Tennis Channel, has spent more than two decades leading legal and business strategy across entertainment, sports, and media, and each of his three disciplines moves the same work earlier. “The companies that hold on to that momentum,” he says of expansion, “are usually the ones that build their governance and compliance foundation long before they ever cross the border.”
Governance Belongs in the Growth Plan
Steckelman treats governance as part of the expansion strategy rather than paperwork trailing behind it. Deciding early who approves what, how local entities report, and where accountability sits gives teams something to work against from the first day. The payoff is counterintuitive for anyone who associates governance with delay. Teams move quickly when they already know the guardrails are in place. This is because a decision that fits an established structure requires no permission-seeking or waiting. Steckelman frames the contrast as the difference between speed and guesswork. An organization without that structure is not moving faster, but improvising and hoping the improvisation survives review.
Compliance Enters the Negotiation
Privacy rules, employment law, tax treatment, and regulatory approvals differ in every market, and Steckelman brings those questions into the upfront negotiations. The reasoning is about timing rather than thoroughness. Both approaches surface the same issues, but only one surfaces them while the terms can still change. Raising a tax treatment problem during negotiation produces a different commercial structure, while raising it at closing produces a renegotiation of something both sides have already built plans around. Steckelman’s aim is commercial terms and legal reality that match from the outset, which spares a company from reopening agreements it has already relied on.
Brand Protection Before the Need Arises
The third discipline extends the same logic to intellectual property. Steckelman files trademarks in the territories a company is heading into rather than only the ones it currently occupies, and he tracks licensing, monitors enforcement, and keeps obligations calendared. The asymmetry here is severe. Filing ahead of expansion is administrative and inexpensive, while discovering a conflict after entering a market is a dispute with someone who now holds a prior claim. Steckelman puts the stake directly, noting that a brand is often the most valuable thing traveling with a company into a new market and deserves the same planning as the revenue model.
International expansion rewards that preparation, and clear governance, embedded compliance, and disciplined brand protection give an organization room to be bold everywhere else. The common thread is that none of these disciplines is more rigorous than what a company would eventually do anyway. Each one simply happens while the answers can still change the outcome. To learn more about governance and compliance for international growth, connect with Peter Steckelman on LinkedIn.
