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You won’t find Mark Cuban putting up money for an NBA Europe franchise.
The former Mavericks majority owner told Front Office Sports on an episode of Portfolio Players that he couldn’t justify spending the reported $500 million to $1 billion the NBA is seeking for franchises in its prospective European league.
Agent Misko Ražnatović, a major figure in European basketball, told FOS the NBA Europe price tags are “science fiction” to him.
Cuban said he recently met with a banker working on the European project and came away with a similar sentiment.
“I can buy a team in a smaller league, win that country’s league and work my way up,” Cuban explained to FOS.
The NBA’s proposed league will have 12 permanent slots and four that teams will annually qualify for. The NBA is aiming to have several elite soccer clubs—like Paris Saint-Germain or Real Madrid—either launch basketball teams or pay to have their existing teams join the league. Cuban worries that the passion and loyalty around those clubs could be a double-edged sword.
“I can pay $500 million, $1 billion and then take over a marketplace that probably hates me going in. Because they’re so tied to their team, if I come in as NBA Europe—that fanbase particularly if I’m using an incumbent team that’s big time right?,” Cuban said.
“And it’s run differently, you risk just being shunned and I’m like, ‘I ain’t stepping into that hornet’s nest.’ I’d rather be the hero that comes in with the team that everyone underestimates, like the Mavs when I bought them, build it up, work my way up, relegate somebody else and be a $1 billion team then. That would be beautiful. But I ain’t giving you $1 billion so people can give you shit the whole time.”
Cuban is no longer the Mavericks governor or alternate governor since he sold the team to the Adelson family in December 2023.
Miriam Adelson’s son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, is now the CEO of Sands Inc. and the governor of the Mavericks. New team president Masai Ujiri is the alternate governor. Had Cuban still had an ownership vote, he said he would have supported the venture despite his reservations about buying a franchise for himself.
“All of that money is just supposed to go right to the owners,” Cuban said. “This is just an equity valuation play for the owners. It’s smart. I would have been all for it. There’s no downside as an [NBA] owner. But you have to look at the fanbases.”
The NBA has said it doesn’t expect the European league to be immediately profitable and plans to invest $3 billion in the league in its early years.
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