If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, you know him from Shark Tank on TV. If you’re an NBA fan (and why would you be reading this blog if you weren’t?), you know him as the former owner of the Dallas Mavericks. We’re talking about Mark Cuban. Never met the guy, but he seems to be pretty cool. Now with a new story out there, we’re liking the guy even more.
Thanks our friends at AfroTech.com for info on this story. It’s been almost a year now since Cuban sold his majority share in the Mavs for a cool three and a half billion dollars. He’s still a big part of the team. He kept his title as President of Basketball Operations, and he’s still a minority team owner.
The team is now owned by other billionaire, Miriam Adelson. She’s a physician and the widow of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson. The Adelson family are majority shareholders in Las Vegas Sands. Forbes Magazine estimates Adelson and her family to have a net worth of $32.3 billion, making her the 44th-richest person and the fifth-richest woman in the world. The sale was approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors this past January.
So… Does all this mean Cuban is done with the whole ownership game? Not at all! For now, cuban maintains a 27% stake of the Mavs, and he’s the team’s alternate governor, when it comes to NBA-wide governance decisions.
The BIG Podcast with SHAQ
On the podcast, Cuban talked about the role of team ownership, saying, “When I first bought [the Mavericks] in 2000 I was the tech guy in the NBA. I was the media guy. I had every edge and every angle.”
Now he says there’s a lot more to it than when he originally bought the team. “Now fast-forward 24 years later. In order to sustain growth to be able to compete with the new collective bargaining agreement, you have to have other sources of revenue. So you see other teams, in all sports for that matter, talking about casinos, talking about doing real estate development. That’s just not me. I wasn’t going to put up $2 billion to get an education on building. If we’re able to build a Venetian-type casino in Dallas with an American Airlines Center in the middle of it, the valuation is $20 billion. But I own 27% of that.”
Now, how about future partners? Here’s where it gets really interesting. On Shaq’s own “The Big Podcast with Shaq,” Cuban said he’s interested in talking with the big man on some kind of future deal. “If my kids were like ‘All right, we’re set. That’s not what we want’ or whatever, and it was Shaq, yeah I would look at making a comeback, but out of respect to my partners I’d have to check with them first.”
As you follow the ShaqFu Radio blog, you know O’Neal has talked about ownership as well. He’s mostly interested in the Orlando Magic, the team where it all started for him after college days. As of now, the Magic isn’t for sale, but things can always change. If not the Magic, Shaq has also talked about brining an expansion NBA team to Las Vegas, which already has the NFL Raiders, and is in the planning stages for a Major League Baseball franchise.