I did no due diligence. I really would like to own an nba team. Mark cuban is semi who did that at an early age. As a young man, he bought an nba Basketball Team and won a national championship. Because of that, i always admired his sports prowess and his knowledge and his business acumen. My children have always told me, dad, youve done ok, but mark cuban is a lot better. Let me ask you this, you have at an early age made some money. Then you made an enormous amount of money when you sold broadcast. Com to yahoo and made over a billion dollars, then you bought a Basketball Team. Then you have a shark tank series that won an emmy award. You are well regarded by entrepreneurs all over the world. President s of the United States call you for advice. What is wrong with this life . There is something about your life that isnt perfect. Mark i have kids. [laughter] i have a 16yearold daughter and a 14yearold daughter. That is all any parent needs to hear. It doesnt matter what you have or dont have. The minute my oldest daughter turned 15, my wife and i got really stupid, lost half our brain capacity and are beholden to our kids. Being a parent is a challenge. It is very humbling. David i have three children as well. I agree. You grew up in pittsburgh, but not from a wealthy family. Is that right . Mark my mom my dad did upholstery on cars, my mom did odd jobs. David you went to university of pittsburgh . Mark i was always in the business. My high school wouldnt let me take business classes. As a sophomore and junior, there were only seniorlevel economic classes. Just to spite them, i started taking classes at night in my junior year and dropped out of high school in my senior year and went to university of pittsburgh. David then you went to Indiana University. Why did you go to indiana . Mark pitt did not have a full undergrad business program, i saw a list of the top 10 undergrad programs and picked out the cheapest one. It was indiana and i when there sight unseen. David when you were there, you started a successful bar . Mark kind of successful. To pay for my school my dad sent me 20 a month. I had to figure out how to pay for things one way or the other. Sometimes i was able to get scholarships. Other times saving money from jobs. Other times it was the hussle. David when you graduated, you moved to dallas. Why did you move to dallas . Mark i had a bunch of buddies there that moved to dallas. I was talking to my buddy on the phone. He is like, mark, the weather is great, the women are beautiful, the economy is good. And im like, wait, up, im coming. [laughter] david you started a Technology Consulting firm . Mark when i first got there, we called it the hill hotel with my five roommates. I got a job working as a bartender bar back. During the day, i applied for jobs and finally got a job selling software, which i did for nine months until i got fired. I started my own company, which at the time when we started was a Pc Consulting company. David you sold that for a couple Million Dollars or so. Mark i sold it for 6 million. 1 million went to all the employees. 2 million went to a partner and 2 million came to me. David 2 million is a kings ransom in those days for someone your age. Mark by that time i was 30. I thought i was the luckiest guy in the world. This was 1989. In my mind, i was going to take time off. I wanted to retire by the time i was 35. One thing my dad had always taught me and emphasized to me is the one asset you can never own or get back is time. Enjoy the time while you are young. Take advantage of it. His job was backbreaking. He lost an eye at work. He did upholstery and a staple broke and destroyed his right eye. He would take me to work sometimes and make me sweep the floor, because he wanted me to see the work i did not want to do. My goal was to retire so i could enjoy my life. We sold micro solutions. I literally retired, a lifetime pass on american airlines, traveled the world like a rock star for the next few years. David after you retired at the age of 30 or so, you ultimately came up with an idea, to listen to Indiana University basketball games on a screening process. Streaming process. Mark by the time i sold micro solutions, i was tech heavy. We were one of the largest systems integrators. I taught myself to program. We did a local networks. I got to understand networking and technology really well. I made a lot of money after work just Trading Technology stocks. Back then, it was so much easier. I called up Goldman Sachs and we would swap ideas. I knew more about the details of tech, what worked and what didnt work and what companies did really well and made tens of millions of dollars doing that. I then got together with my buddy, todd wagoner from indiana. He came to me with the idea. This new internet thing, is there any way we can listen to indiana basketball using the internet . I was like, that is a cool idea. This was early 1995. Im like, lets try to figure it out. Starting with a packard bell pc that i bought for 4000 at best buy or something, in the second bedroom of my house i just sat and tried to figure out how we would do this. It went from 10 people the first week to 100 to thousands. We knew we had something within 30 days. David you took the company public. Is that right . Mark in 1998. David the stock zoomed. Hate to use the word zoom. It went up a lot. Mark largest first date ipo bump in the history of the stock market at the time. David did you say i will build this Company Forever and keep , or did somebody buy it from you . Mark the goal was to dominate, we called it net casting at the time, this was preyoutube. We were the dominant force in streaming. We had rights to all the major sports leagues. We had hundreds of radio stations. By 1999, we were doing video as well. We bought 10 of what turned out to be lionsgate studios. We bought video rights to all these libraries. We were making acquisitions. We were on a path to dominate. Yahoo had invested in us the previous year. And came to us and said we want to buy you. We need to get into multimedia youre the leader, lets combine forces and they gave us an offer we couldnt refuse. David they offered ultimately did a deal of 5. 7 billion. You didnt own all 5. 7 billion yourself. I guess you had some outside investors and other people. Mark i ended up about 33 of it. The way it was structured ended up being taxable on the gains. It turned out well. David you bought the dallas Basketball Team, the mavericks for roughly 280 million. ,what propelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark i remember being on the team bus in january, talking to the coaches. I was like, why did you spend so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. David here is the question ive always had, why is it or how did you have the foresight to sell the yahoo stock at a time when the markets were going up . People thought yahoo would be going up forever. You sold your yahoo stock and cashed out before yahoo went down by 90 . Mark i hedged it. I mentioned i traded stocks and did really well. I watched complete industries skyrocket and then collapsed. There were companies when Dell Computer went public, there were 10 other pc companies that crashed and burned. I had seen it multiple times, i made money on the way up and down. I was clear to Goldman Sachs at the time that i wanted to do a hedge. I had a sixmonth moratorium where i couldnt do anything. I took literally almost every penny i had, 20 million and bought a put on an internet index. I lost all my money on that hedge. Literally all gone, which was good, because that got me to the point where yahoo was still a high flyer. That hedge saved me and actually made me money. David but you lost the first 20 million . Mark yep. David what did your wife say . mark i wasnt married at the time. [laughter] but it was timed out right. I got through the six months. Even though i lost the money on that hedge, i knew, based off where the yahoo stock was, what the volatility levels were, how i would be able to sell calls on my yahoo stock and use that money to buy put on the yahoo stock. When the stock collapsed, my puts were worth a fortune. David you bought the Dallas Mavericks for roughly 280 million, which at the time was thought to be a lot of money. Today it is a fraction of what it is worth. What propelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark i have always been a basketball junkie. I was a Dallas Mavericks season ticket holder. During that time i owned season tickets, they were awful. All of the 1990s they were voted the worst professional sports franchise. It was the 19992000 season undefeated,we are and i am a season ticket holder. I am excited to go to the game. It was not a sellout, there was no energy in the crowd. I had just sold broadcast. Com. I thought i can do better than this. It dawned on me i can put my money where my mouth is and inquire about buying it. From late october, it took until january 4 to close the deal. I didnt care about price. They said heres the price and i said yes, i realized i still had my hedge on for yahoo and still benefited when yahoo stocks went up. There were days then this is before the internet bubble collapsed i remember being on the team bus in january talking to the coaches like, why did you spend so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. Im like, let me show you the price of yahoo . It went up 200 today. That pays for the whole team. David when you get to play with players, can you work out with them . Mark up until, obviously, the changes with this season. Before every home game i would go on the court. There is nothing crazier to me as a basketball junkie than to have an arena and you are out there shooting. A lot of times over the years i would play oneonone with the players and shoot threes. David when you are playing with them, they dont ease up to let you win because you are the owner . Mark hell no. The other side of it is if i beat them, they will never hear the end of it. Theres no way. David you have been the owner of the team for 20 years. In the early years, and maybe recently, you have been fined a lot for criticizing the referees, criticizing the league. Did you do that on purpose because you wanted attention, or could you couldnt constrain yourself . Mark no, i wanted to improve the league. When i first got to the nba, i was clear we dont sell basketball, we sell experiences. If you think about the sporting events you have gone to, you dont think about touchdown, the dunks, you remember who you were with. The first time a parent took you or the first time you were with your friends or you had your buddys Bachelor Party or for first date. They didnt realize that is what we sold. It took a lot of aggression on both sides, a lot of going back and forth with thencommissioner david stern. To his credit, while he had to fine me, privately he would agree with me on a lot of those things. To me, i was just being a good partner. Even though a lot of my partners didnt appreciate it. David in the early days, you were a young owner. Now you may be one of the more experienced owners. Do you get people listening to you more than they did 20 years ago . Mark i am one of the longerterm owners. They are used to me. Ill still raise hell and speak up. But now they are used to me. Things have changed, how we approach officiating, how we market games, what we do for broadcast, so much has changed over 20 years for the better. David the nba is playing in a bubble in orlando. How is that working out . Are you surprised it has worked out reasonably well . Do you think it could have been done better . What is your view of it . Mark it is shocking how well it has gone. There is so much risk bringing thousands of people together in one area, and to have zero cases . That is stunning. Literally, we were concerned about what might happen. Primarily, you are talking about a population of 20somethings. Outside the bubble, 20somethings in any city are not the most conscientious when it comes to Wearing Masks and following social distancing and other protocols. To our players and staff and the nba and disney, to their credit, everybody has been really careful, and it has paid off. David Dirk Nowitzki was one of your star players for a while. You have a couple of european stars as well. One you got from the new york knicks, a trade President Trump commended you on, i recall. Mark yes. David when are you going to recruit more jewish basketball players in the nba . Mark i dont care if they are from mars. Whatever works, i just want to win. David from behind you is what looks like a replica of a Basketball Championship trophy. Mark that is the real deal. David are you hopeful of getting another one someday . Mark this one is 10 years old. Barry obrien needs some decent friends. Then i put together a team to look at, what is the new normal . What does it mean that when we reopen there will still be a virus concern. What does it mean that we have to think about doing more digitally . What does it mean that we have to protect our staff . When this pandemic hit, 90 of the staff had to go to telework. It taught me to think differently to ask fundamental questions about structure, about the way we do business. My goal is to come out of it better and stronger. David when the smithsonian reopens, will people be required to wear a mask . Unless you have a medical issue. Our job is to keep the staff safe and the visitors safe. David what lessons have you personally learned . One of the big lessons i have learned is that i have left my fingerprints on everything. Ive got good people working. I used to think that i have to be there. I dont have to be there. The other thing i learned more than anything else is the fragility of human life. And the fragility of fairness in this country. So the dual pandemics of the virus and racism have inspired me even more to struggle to help a country understand itself better and find a country that is freer and fairer. David you have an everyman image where you are in average joe. You are an average joe. The truth is you have a lot of technology background, a lot of sophisticated financial background. Bill gates is seen as a technology guy, maybe jeff bezos is. You have a lot of Technology Knowledge that you dont advertise as much. Mark before i got fired, it before i got tired, it became clear to me that when it came to technology, there were two types of people. The people who created the technology and everybody else. I was tied with everybody else in terms of knowledge of any new technology that came out. If i put in the effort to learn about that technology, i was going to move ahead of the 99 . Maybe never catch the people who created the tech but i would be ahead of everyone else. That has always been my mantra. I try to stick to that today. David as you are talking to us today, you have many different businesses. You have a big investment business. You said you are an investor in amazon and netflix. Do you have advisors, or do you make your own decisions . Mark pretty much make my own decisions. I used to be very active as a trader. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s there was less money chasing more stocks. Now there is more money chasing fewer stocks. It is hard to trade and be successful. I stick to companies i believe in. Ive owned netflix since it was 50. Amazon i was buying between 500 and 700. Ive got some scattered things that i have held on to. I no longer trade. That fed inflation of Financial Assets kind of gives us a tailwind. David covid has changed the world in terms of opportunities. It is obviously hurt people, but helps those who are entrepreneurial. You have said this is a good time to figure out new areas of business. Is that a fair statement . Mark it is so unfortunate, but it is true. We have heard Warren Buffett say buy when there is blood in the street. It is a most analogous here. So many Small Businesses are closing. So many retails and businesses are closing. Malls are going bankrupt. Companies that are unable to transition to selling digitally or not taking full advantage of ecommerce are struggling. Big businesses are not sure how to protect their legacy businesses. That type of uncertainty creates a lot of opportunity. Combine that with people becoming more comfortable purchasing online and living a digital lifestyle, i think there are a lot of unique opportunities available to people who have a vision for the future. I think in 10, 15, 20 years, we will look back and there will be 30 worldclass companies will be created by people we think are crazy now. David you had a relationship with President Trump at one point. Mark this was after he announced. Thinking he had no chance to win, i said i think donald trump is the best thing to happen to politics. He is not a traditional politician he said what is on his mind. That got picked up everywhere. I became his new best friend. He would call me all the time. That is who he is. Until i said one day i did not think he was qualified, then it was all downhill from there. David he never invited you to the white house . Mark he did recently. But everything donald trump touches turns into a mess. So i did not accept the offer. David you said you might consider running for president. You had a pollster look at it, why did you decide not to run this time . Mark primarily because my family said no. Given the nastiness of politics and the hate and social media destructiveness, your family has got to be up for it. That was the primary reason. The secondary reason was in the polling i did do, i cannot get more than 25 of the vote. I can dominate with independent s, but could not pull enough republicans and democrats. David would you consider running in the future for president . Mark i hope not. The only reason i considered it now was because things are so partisan. People are putting party over country. I thought as an independent, someone who was not dogmatic about anything except trying to serve the american people, the timing might have been good, but it is not my ultimate dream job. David so if somebody is watching this and says, i want to be like mark cuban, be successful. What would you say are the traits necessary to be a successful leader . Mark find something that you love to do and be great at it. Most people, the one thing in life you can control is your effort and most people dont put in the effort, they think it comes to them, and it doesnt. As you know. There is a lot of competition no matter what you choose. David behind you it looks like is a replica of a Basketball Championship trophy. Mark that is the real deal. David you look like you need another one to match it up. Are you hopeful of getting another one someday . Mark hopefully this year. That is the goal. There is one winner and 29 people tied for last place in the nba. This one is almost 10 years old. Larry obrien back there needs some decent friends. You doing okay . Yeah. This moving thing never gets any easier. Well, xfinity makes moving super easy. I can transfer my internet and tv service in about a minute. Wow, that is easy. Almost as easy as having those guys help you move. We are those guys. Thats you . The truck adds 10 pounds. In the arms. Okay. Transfer your Service Online in a few easy steps. Now thats simple, easy, awesome. Transfer your service in minutes, making moving with xfinity a breeze. Visit xfinity. Com moving today. Manus the lebanese economy was on the brink of collapse this year as it contended with the coronavirus pandemic, soaring inflation, and a weakening currency. The imf, the world bank, and others have been holding back financial support, mainly due to the continued failure of leaders to implement muchneeded reforms. Then came the biggest peace time catastrophe in the nations history. A massive explosion that rocked the capital, beirut, killing more than 150 people, leaving thousands wounded, and full blocks destroyed. We count the costs in this bloomberg special. 2020 year in crisis lebanon
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