The Bizarre Story Of How A College Stadium Was Named After A Walmart Heiress Who Never Attended The School

Walmart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton and his brother James, who went by "Bud" Walton. The company's first store opened on July 2, 1962, in Rogers, Arkansas. That small store turned into an empire. Today, there are more than 10,000 Walmart locations across the world. The company generated $650 billion in revenue last year and currently sports a market cap of $830 billion.

Today, the extended Walton heirs are among the richest people on the planet, and collectively they are likely the richest family in the world.

Naturally, if you're a Walton heir, all that wealth leads to some very nice perks. For example, you can name stadiums and arenas after your children. Even at schools they never attended…

(Photo by Michael Bezjian/Getty Images)

The $25 Million Gift

Elizabeth Paige Laurie (who goes by Paige) was born in 1982. She is the granddaughter of Bud Walton and the daughter of Nancy Walton Laurie. Nancy met her husband, Bill Laurie, while they were both in college at the University of Missouri.

In 2001, Nancy and Bill donated $25 million to the University of Missouri to pay for the construction of a new sports arena. According to the terms of their donation, the sports arena was to be named after their daughter, Paige Laurie. Specifically, the stadium was set to be called:

The Paige Sports Arena

You might assume that Paige was either an enrolled student OR an alum of the University of Missouri. That's not the case. At the time of the donation, Paige was actually a student at the University of Southern California.

Still, since the Walton Laurie family donated a third of the arena's costs, they earned the right to name it. So when the basketball season commenced in October 2004, players and fans were all welcomed for the first time to the brand new state-of-the-art "Paige Sports Arena."

That was around 21 years ago. How many basketball games did the University of Missouri athletes play in The Page Sports Arena??? A grand total of… THREE.

A Scandal Erupts

Shortly after the arena opened, Laurie's former USC roommate, Elena Martinez, told ABC's 20/20 that she had written term papers and completed homework assignments for Laurie. The Walmart heiress apparently paid Martinez $20,000 to do all of that homework. During the interview, Martinez said she dropped out of USC because tuition was too expensive. However, she learned a lot by doing Laurie's classwork, so she still got some value out of college.

In the wake of the scandal, the University of Missouri dropped Paige's name from its arena. It's now simply called Mizzou Arena.

Six months before Elena's 20/20 interview, Laurie received a bachelor's degree from the USC Annenberg School for Communication. In the wake of the scandal, USC released a statement stating that Laurie had "voluntarily surrendered her degree and returned her diploma to the university" and was no longer considered a graduate of USC.

Divorce Drama

Another fun anecdote about Paige involves a shopping center in Malibu and her ex-husband, Patrick.

Paige was married to a guy named Patrick for around six years. Their divorce proceedings commenced in the middle of 2014. In his spousal support request, Patrick sought $400,000 per month. He claimed at the time Paige was earning $872,000 per month passively just from stock dividends alone!

In 2011, Paige bought a shopping center in Malibu called Trancas Country Mart. She put Patrick in charge of managing a major overhaul. During their divorce, Paige accused Patrick of funneling money out of the shopping center to enrich himself. She claims he was originally meant to earn $15,000 per month to manage a construction project at the mall. Patrick then allegedly increased his monthly fee to $75,000. Oh, and that was on top of a flat $250,000 he was already being paid to oversee everything at Trancas.

It's unclear how exactly the divorce was settled. I assume it wasn't cheap.

In December 2018, Paige paid $41.5 million for a house in Beverly Hills. In June 2024, she remarried.