Rocker’s Remarks Spurred O’Melveny Partner to Buy WNBA Team
A co-owner of the Los Angeles Sparks is a former Yale law grad and entertainment partner at O’Melveny & Myers.
Lawyer Carla Christofferson credits a “defining moment” for spurring her idea to put together a group of investors to buy the women’s professional basketball team, the New York Times reports.
Christofferson and friend Kathy Goodman were longtime season-ticket holders and had many good ideas about how to improve the team and its attendance. But it never occurred to Christofferson that her opinions could be translated into action. Now the two women are co-owners of the team, purchased for $10 million in December 2006.
Christofferson says she got the idea when she attended a game at Staples Center with the man she was dating at the time, rocker Eddie Van Halen. He had no misgivings about sharing his ideas about the Sparks with its president.
“It was a defining moment,” Christofferson said. “I thought, Why is it that he thinks he can be involved in this and can make a contribution, and Kathy and I, who know a lot about basketball, don’t think that way? When I thought of what was stopping us, I realized we were what was stopping us.”
Christofferson grew up in a small town and attended college with the help of scholarships obtained through beauty pageant wins.
The Times story says Christofferson and Goodman “represent the next stage in the evolution of women in sports: the self-made mogul who neither inherited a team from her father or a spouse … nor bought one with her husband’s wealth.”
