Buy low, sell high. Marl Cuban just proved himself a master of that tried-and-true investment mantra.
The Shark Tank mainstay is not only swimming away from that show after 14 successful seasons, he has now received approval from the NBA Board of Governors to sell the majority stake in his beloved Dallas Mavericks.
Cuban bought the Mavericks for $285 million in 2000 is now selling the team for about $3.5 billion. That’s a cool $3-plus billion over the purchase price and Cuban will reportedly retain 27% of the team and may well retain control of basketball operations. That’s a pretty sweet deal.
Cuban is selling to the Las Vegas Sands Corp., owned by the Adelson and Dumont families. Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, announced last month she was selling $2 billion of her shares to buy a sports team that was widely tipped to be the Mavericks. Her son-in-law Patrick Dumont is the COO of Sands Corp. and will take the Mavericks’ seat on the Board of Governors.
Cuban reportedly wanted to partner with The Sands to build an arena, hotel and casino in downtown Dallas. The Sands has lobbied Texas state legislators to make gambling legal in the state, which would require alterations to the Texas Constitution.
The move mirrors a trend that has seen professional sports leagues, long resistant to associations with gambling, embrace betting and form official relationships with sports books. In 2018, the NBA became the first major U.S. sports league to partner with a sportsbook operator for legal wagering. That deal made MGM Resorts the exclusive official gaming partner of the NBA and WNBA. In 2021, FanDuel took over those exclusive rights.
Also of interest to Cuban and his new partners is the number of stadiums that now have sportsbooks inside of them, allowing fans to bet on the game in progress. They include Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, home to the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers; Wrigley Field, where Chicago Cubs fans can place wagers; and FedExField, home to the Washington Commanders. All of those deals went into effect in 2023.
As for Cuban, it’s his second blockbuster asset sale. In 1999, he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Cuban made the deal at the peak of the dot-com bubble. At the time, Broadcast.com had about 570,000 users, making the purchase price $10,000 per user. Cuban sold most of his Yahoo stock later that year, netting over $1 billion. Yahoo! shut down most of its broadcast services division in 2002 and later discontinued Broadcast.com.
Just months later, Cuban used some of his Yahoo money to buy the Mavericks for $285 million.