Press Release

Boston, MA, November 1, 2019 – Burns & Levinson partner Josef Volman has been named a “Sports Trailblazer” by the National Law Journal (NLJ). As co-chair of Burns & Levinson’s Business Law Group, Volman is a dealmaker extraordinaire who has become a go-to attorney nationally for sports teams and businesses who need to get deals done.

Volman represented Sportvision – creator of the revolutionary yellow 1st and 10 line for football -– for over 20 years. He helped them get their first round of financing; handled deals with ESPN, Fox, Nascar, and MLB; and negotiated their exit and acquisition by SportsMEDIA Technology.

He has led the purchase and sale of six minor league baseball teams – including selling a team to baseball legend Cal Ripken – and one minor league basketball team. He handled the groundbreaking sale of the Modesto Nuts to the Seattle Mariners. The deal marked one of the first times a major league baseball (MLB) team became a majority owner of a minor league team, which required Volman to come up with a new type of structure that complied with complicated MLB league rules, while allowing the Modesto Nuts to continue to run the day-to-day operations of the team.

Volman has crafted creative deals to help investor groups in Boston and New York purchase three minor league hockey teams: the Manchester Monarchs (NH), the Norfolk Admirals (Virginia) and the South Carolina Stingrays. He also helped bring the first United Soccer League team to Hartford, Connecticut – negotiating an innovative public-private partnership to renovate the historic Dillon Stadium where the new USL Hartford Athletics team officially launched in July 2019.

In 2018, Volman led the launch of Boston VC Sports to bring the sports business and investing communities together to help each other. Volman is passionate about the group and the opportunity to give back and share his knowledge with others.

Volman has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America since 2013. He was named an NLJ “M&A Trailblazer” in 2017. He received his J.D. from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1991 and his B.A. from Tufts University in 1988.