Former San Diego Padres owner Jeff Moorad has joined Morgan Lewis as a partner, where he will help oversee the law firm’s sports practice.
Along with fellow partner Jack Concannon, Moorad will be chairman of the sports practice, overseeing a group of 50 lawyers that counts the NFL, UFC, Oakland Raiders and Boston Red Sox as clients.
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Moorad will keep positions with his investment management and hospitality ventures.
Photo by: MORGAN LEWIS |
Morgan Lewis has worked on stadium and team finance, mergers and acquisitions, and media rights. Moorad said he wants to help focus those relationships.
“Despite doing an extraordinary amount of work in the industry representing clients like the NFL, MLB and DraftKings, the firm has never pulled out a particular focus on the sports industry,” Moorad said. “Our initial challenge is to identify the mass of work that’s being done in the industry. … The interest is as much to be of service to the other components of the industry, whether it be finance, or broadcast. There’s an endless list of involvements that we intend to focus on in a more developed way than the firm has done in the past.”
Moorad lives in Newport Beach, Calif., and has an office in Costa Mesa, which is where he will work. He will remain chairman and CEO of his investment management company, Moorad Sports Partners, and chairman of PrimeSport, a premium hospitality company he owns with Carlyle Group and Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross’ RSE Ventures.
“When I got involved in sports initially representing players, the average salary in baseball was $300,000 in 1984. The average salary in the NFL was $160,000,” Moorad said. “There are a number of data points that suggest how significant the growth of the industry has been. Today, what once was a bit of a cottage industry is now a multibillion-dollar mega industry that touches virtually every corporation around the globe.”
