Tech Strategy & Big Tech · August 2026
Explaining the real economics of owning a sports franchise, Cuban is blunt about the appeal. He credits buying the Dallas Mavericks with making him a public figure — Shark Tank included — and calls a team the ultimate vanity asset rather than an investment.
Transcript
neither here nor there.
Depends on the price. So explain what's happening here for me. I find this really interesting, especially, you know, you have Iger in there, which is interesting. I think he's the pretty one, and Josh is the money. Explain what's happening here. A couple
things. One, it's a vanity asset. Like if I didn't buy the Dallas Mavericks, probably wouldn't know who I was, right? I mean, you would because of tech, but most people would not. I would not be a celebrity. I wouldn't have gotten on Shark Tank, right? David Stern, rest in peace, was the commissioner of the NBA and used to always say, I made you by finding you all those times. And he was right. You know, it is the ultimate vanity asset. It wasn't your
behavior.
No, you know, there's 30 NBA teams, 32 in other leagues. And so we know Jerry Jones's name, not because he was in the oil business. You know, people now know who Josh Kushner is, not just because of his brother. And so that, one, it's a vanity asset. Two, because it's a vanity asset and now the leagues are allowing private equity to get involved. That's increasing the prices because private equity chases where the narratives are. You know, and this is crypto for rich people in some respects, right? It's where the fun narrative is. But from a true business perspective, there's two sides to this. One, if you can leverage it to build, you know, so if you look around staples that were crypto.com center, right, there's all kinds of cool stuff. There's, um, if you go by, there's the battery outside Atlanta, right? There's by the Chase Center, there's all kinds of stuff, right? And so if you're able to build all that stuff, you can make real money. So it's not the team per se, but it's the leverage it gives you by the surrounding area. Yeah. And you can do it once you own the arena. You can do concerts, which is where the Mavs and the Dallas stars that we shared the arena with made most of our money, right? By doing concerts in a very
you don't even have to have a good basketball team.