Robin Roberts, the host of ABC’s Good Morning America, has been such a high profile fan of the New York Liberty that when championship rings were handed out back in May, she wound up with one.
Now, per an announcement Tuesday from Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment, she’ll have more than ring. She’s one of three new investors in the team, along with Olivia Sterns Walton of the Wal-Mart Waltons, America’s richest family and Amy Griffin, a leading woman venture capitalist and best-selling author.
The three women will join other equity investors anchored by Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba with Joe Tsai as well as six other women with both professional sports and investment backgrounds: Karen Finerman, Thasunda Brown Duckett, Karlie Kloss, Gabrielle Rubenstein, and Samantha Lasry. Those investments were announced back in May. All nine investors will share in the same stake, described by Bloomberg as being in the “mid-teens.” In return, the group put up an undisclosed cash infusion. Ma, one of China’s richest entrepreneurs with a net worth of close to $50 billion, appears to be the lead investor in the group.
The cash will be used, according to the team, in the construction of the team’s $80 million, 75,000-square-foot training complex in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, scheduled to open in 2027. It’s this investment that vaulted the Liberty to a valuation of $450 million, the most ever for a professional women’s sports franchis….
—Roberts is the most high profile of the new investors, a frequent courtside presence at Liberty games where she often sat with Clara Wu Tsai. A multiple Emmy award winner, Roberts was a sportscaster on ESPN for 15 years (1990–2005) and the first woman to co-host NFL Primetime. She became co-anchor on Good Morning America in 2005. she was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012. Her treatment for myelodysplastic syndrome was chronicled on GMA, which earned a 2012 Peabody Award for the coverage. She is the daughter of a Tuskegee airman, one of the first African American military aviators.
—Walton, who had brief tours at NBC and MSNBC as well as Bloomberg News, is the wife of Tom Walton, a grandson of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. She is currently Chairperson of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Fayetteville, Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart’s corporate offices. She has become a strong advocate for maternal health in Arkansas which ranks 50th in maternal morality in the U.S.
—Griffin is founder of G9 Ventures, a venture capital firm that has prioritized investments in women-led start-ups including Goop, Bumble, and Spanx. A billionaire in her own right, she is married to John Griffin, founder of hedge fund Blue Ridge Capital. She is most famous for her New York Times best-seller, The Tell, a book about how using psychedelics, she recovered repressed memory of abuse by a middle school teacher. (A Times investigation in September called into question some of the book’s details). She was captain of her college volleyball team at Virginia and like her fellow investors has media experience, having worked for Sports Illustrated in marketing and promotions coming out of college.
BSE Global, parent of the Liberty, Nets and Barclays Center, had previously sold a 15% stake to Julia Koch and family.
