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“Nothing’s really changed except my bank account,” Mark Cuban said to reporters after the NBA approved his sale of a majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families on Wednesday.
The outspoken team owner isn’t being shy about what’s ahead—from a brand-new arena to the transformation of the Dallas Metroplex into the Las Vegas of Texas.
For this season, though, everything is status quo. The 65-year-old Cuban retains a 27% minority stake in the team, and the sale reportedly valued the franchise between $3.5 billion and $4 billion. Cuban will continue overseeing basketball operations while the new owners focus on the business side of things.
“Financially, we’re in a far better position,” Cuban said of the Mavericks. That security comes from the financial heft of Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont (now the Mavs’ governor), who control the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, a publicly-traded casino and resort company with a $37 billion market cap. That group previously owned Vegas staples like the Venetian, which Cuban would love to replicate in Dallas.
“I don’t care so much about sports betting,” Cuban said. “If you look at destination resorts and casinos, the casino part of it is tiny, relative to the whole bigger destination aspect of it. Could you imagine building the Venetian in Dallas, Texas? That would just change everything.”
But sports betting would still be a key element of bringing a Vegas element to Texas, and the state likely won’t revisit any sports gambling legislation until 2025 at the earliest. The Mavs’ lease at American Airlines Center expires in 2031.
Timberwolves Sale on Track
Elsewhere in pro basketball: Alex Rodriguez and entrepreneur Marc Lore are expected to exercise their option to acquire a controlling ownership interest of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx, ahead of their Dec. 31 deadline to act, according to ESPN.
In 2021, A-Rod and Lore agreed to eventually take over the teams in a deal valuing the Minnesota basketball franchises at $1.5 billion. The two currently own 40% of the teams and are set to end up with an 80% majority stake in 2024 while current Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor keeps 20%. Taylor previously said he expected Rodriguez and Lore to push back the Dec. 31 deadline.
