Mark Cuban

• Born: July 31, 1958
• Place of Birth: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

AMERICAN ENTREPRENEUR, INVESTOR, AND BASKETBALL TEAM OWNER

Unlike sports team owners who remain quietly on the sidelines, Mark Cuban is publicly and vocally identified with the Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise. During the games, Cuban sits courtside, often yells at officials or players on the opposing team, and in the eyes of fans and commentators, is clearly connected with the Mavericks.

Early Life

Mark Cuban was born into a family of modest means in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started his first job when he was young and worked his way through college by performing a series of odd jobs. He attended the University of Pittsburgh for a year and then transferred to Indiana University, graduating in 1981. After college, he moved to Dallas, Texas, where he first took a job as a bartender. He then worked for a short time as a salesman for a computer software company. He was fired from this job, which led him to found his own company, MicroSolutions.

First Ventures

At MicroSolutions, Cuban provided software and other computer services to companies. He admittedly knew very little about software, but both at the software company he worked for, and at MicroSolutions, Cuban taught himself the business after making the sale. In essence, he would tell people that he could provide services that he had no experience delivering. He then would quickly read computer manuals cover to cover so he would be able to offer the services he promised. MicroSolutions grew slowly, with only a few employees during the first few years, but it did manage to grow. One of its most important large clients was Perot Systems, a company founded by H. Ross Perot several years before Perot’s first presidential campaign in 1992. Cuban’s efforts were fairly successful, even though MicroSolutions never grew into a major software company. In 1990, Cuban sold the company to CompuServe, an Internet services firm. Cuban made about $2 million on the deal, which allowed him to enjoy financial freedom for a time.

Mature Wealth

In Cuban’s next large venture, he funded a friend’s effort to broadcast college games over the internet. This enterprise began on a very small scale, but it eventually grew, and less than four years after its creation, the company, now called Broadcast.com, employed three hundred people. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom, Broadcast.com was sold to Yahoo!, Inc., and Cuban received billions of dollars worth of Yahoo! stock. Cuban and his partner Todd Wagner became rich, but they also shared the wealth with many of the employees who initially came to work for the company, and some sources estimate that hundreds of these employees became millionaires.

Cuban decided to diversify his portfolio, which is why he fared better than many others who made their wealth in technology and saw their fortunes decline when the dot-com bubble burst. Cuban made a number of high-profile purchases, including buying the Dallas Mavericks basketball team from H. Ross Perot, Jr., the son of Cuban’s former client at MicroSolutions.

Cuban has been very public about his ownership of the Mavericks. While many National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise owners sit in luxury boxes, Cuban always sits courtside, where he freely expresses his feelings about the referees and rival teams. He has been fined more than $1 million for his behavior; these fines were paid to the NBA and are believed to be a record for a team owner. He matched these fines with donations to a variety of groups, including organizations involved in cancer research and the treatment of enzyme disorders. He also donated more than $1 million to relief efforts after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Cuban has upgraded the Mavericks’ facilities in order to attract potential free agents and to generally improve the team. During the 2009 NBA playoffs, Cuban gained notoriety for getting into a shouting match with an opposing team’s player. Despite his often over-the-top behavior at games, Cuban’s ownership has benefited the Mavericks. He took a team that seldom made and rarely won the NBA championship playoffs before his acquisition, and he helped make it a team that frequently competed in the playoffs and won the championship in 2011.

Besides the Mavericks, Cuban has also been involved in a variety of technological ventures. He is a co-owner with Todd Wagner of the media company 2929 Entertainment. 2929 has produced modestly budgeted films such as Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), We Own the Night (2007), and The Road (2009). The firm also owns film distributor Magnolia Pictures, along with the Landmark Theatres chain and a major stake in the AXS TV cable and satellite television network.

Cuban is the chair of AXS TV (pronounced "access"), which prior to 2012, was HDNet, a company Cuban cofounded in 2001. HDNet was one of the first companies to provide high-definition satellite television to subscribers. Over its history, the network has focused on movies, live music events, comedy, and mixed martial arts.

Cuban has tried to purchase other sports enterprises. In the world of Major League Baseball, he made an unsuccessful bid to buy the Chicago Cubs when they were up for sale in 2007. In 2010, he bid $598 million to purchase the Texas Rangers during the team’s bankruptcy auction, but his bid was denied, and the team was purchased by an investment group led by Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan. He also briefly attempted to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2012. Cuban also has expressed interest in buying either the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey team or the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball franchise, having ties to these teams because he grew up in Pittsburgh.

In 2008, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a civil suit against Cuban, alleging he had engaged in insider trading. The suit alleged that he had privileged information about Mamma.com, Inc., an internet search engine company in which he had invested, and that he used this information to sell his stock at a profit. Cuban claimed he had not violated any laws. On July 17, 2009, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the SEC could not hold Cuban liable for insider trading because the agency did not allege that Cuban had agreed not to trade based on confidential information he received about the company.

Cuban's public profile got another boost starting in 2011 when he began appearing on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank, in which entrepreneurs pitch business plans to wealthy investors, who decide on the program whether to fund them. Cuban was a guest "shark" in 2011 and has been one of the six regular cast members since 2012. Cuban has made comments alluding to a possible run for president, generating media attention but taking no concrete steps in that direction. Regardless of his political ambitions, Cuban’s business empire continued to expand in the 2020s with investments in cryptocurrency. In January 2022, Cuban launched the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. This business venture aimed to put affordable versions of generic prescription drugs into the hands of American consumers.

In 2023, Cuban sold his majority stake in the Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families, who are affiliated with the casino and resort firm Las Vegas Sands. At the time of the sale, Cuban maintained a minority stake in the team and passed on the role of the team's governor to Patrick Dumont, the president and CEO of Las Vegas Sands.

Legacy

In many ways, Cuban has rewritten the role of American sports franchise owner and entrepreneur. Most owners stay out of the headlines and away from their teams. Cuban does neither. He is a very public fan and advocate for his team and is sometimes so noticeable that he distracts from the games themselves. Cuban, however, is generally entertaining and always serves as a topic of conversation.

Consistently listed on Forbes magazine's list of billionaires, Cuban is also part of an emerging generation of highly visible, superrich Americans who have no qualms about publicly expressing their beliefs. He seeks attention for his comments and publicity campaigns, not for the conspicuous consumption for which wealthy people previously sought notice. However, like wealthy people in previous generations, he has used some of his wealth in philanthropic endeavors, such as the Fallen Patriot Fund, which he founded in 2003 to help the families of killed or wounded US service members. Time magazine named Cuban on its list of the one hundred most influential people in the world in 2024.

Bibliography

Berenson, Alex. The Number: How the Drive for Quarterly Earnings Corrupted Wall Street and Corporate America. New York: Random House, 2004.

Clifford, Catherine. "How Mark Cuban Went from a Working-Class Family in Pittsburgh to a Self-Made Billionaire." CNBC, 20 Dec. 2016, www.cnbc.com/2016/12/20/how-mark-cuban-went-from-working-class-to-self-made-billionaire.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018.

Ericksen, Gregory K. Net Entrepreneurs Only: Ten Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of Their Success. New York: John Wiley, 2000.

"Forbes Profile Mark Cuban." Forbes, 2023, www.forbes.com/profile/mark-cuban/?sh=157e5fd76a04. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Leonard, Devlin. “Mark Cuban May Be a Billionaire, but What He Really Needs Is Respect.” Fortune 156, no. 8 (October 15, 2007): 172.

Livingston, Jessica. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days. Berkeley, Calif.: Apress, 2008.

“Mark Cuban Aims to Lower Prescription Drug Prices With Online Pharmacy.” PBS, 5 June 2022, www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mark-cuban-aims-to-lower-prescription-drugs-prices-with-online-pharmacy. Accessed 27 Apr. 2023.

Rader, Doyle. "Mark Cuban Sells More Assets to New Dallas Mavericks Owners." Forbes, 3 Jan. 2024, www.forbes.com/sites/doylerader/2024/01/03/mark-cuban-sells-more-assets-to-new-dallas-mavericks-owners/?sh=7e1a92321864. Accessed 23 Apr. 2024.

Sullivan, Paul. "How Mark Cuban Hangs onto His Money." The New York Times, 19 Feb. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/your-money/how-mark-cuban-hangs-onto-his-money.html. Accessed 19 Apr. 2018.