Mark Cuban after the sale of the Mavericks in 2023: “I could’ve gotten more money selling it to somebody else.” Cuban said he was incentivized to sell to the Adelsons because they would allow him to remain involved in basketball operations. “Nothing’s changed except my bank account.”

NBA’s other 29 owners voted unanimously to authorize Cuban’s sale of the franchise to the families who run the Las Vegas Sands corporation, led by Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont.

Cuban sold the Mavericks for a price in excess of $4 billion, which includes the franchise and its assets such as buildings and land. That figure is the team’s valuation, and it determines the amount the Adelson family paid to purchase the controlling stake in the team.

Dumont will serve as the Mavericks’ governor, but Cuban, who retains 27 percent of the franchise, believes his presence and basketball impact will look similar to the one he has now. While he concedes there is “no contractual language” guaranteeing this, Cuban says he will continue overseeing the franchise’s basketball operations.

How will Cuban’s continued role in basketball operations work?

Cuban spoke to reporters and described his continued role with the franchise as a “partnership.”
“It’s not like I have a contract and a job and I get a salary,” he said.
As the team’s governor, Dumont will have the final say in decisions, but Cuban emphasized his learned basketball acumen from his 23 years as owner.

“They’re not basketball people,” he said. “I’m not real estate people.”

“Nothing’s really changed except my bank account,” he said.

By ceding majority ownership of the franchise, Cuban cannot guarantee his role running the team. But he said he believes, in the event of a future disagreement between himself and Dumont over the team’s direction, that they “would work it out.”

Why is Cuban selling to the Adelson family?

Cuban was incentivized to sell to the Adelson family, as opposed to another potential buyer, because they would allow him to remain involved in basketball operations.

“I could’ve gotten more money selling it to somebody else.”

One of the many ways Cuban has influenced the NBA — and North American sports in general — is that he normalized the concept of a public-facing governor actively involved in their franchise. Another buyer, one willing to pay more in an open bidding process, might have been someone looking to follow in Cuban’s footsteps without his continued involvement.

Why is the Adelson family buying the Mavericks?

Both Cuban and the Adelson family have been transparent about their mutual interest in legalizing sports gambling in Texas.

In late 2022, Cuban first mentioned the Sands corporation as a potential partner for his vision of an arena built within a destination resort casino in Dallas. Several team sources say the two parties had been engaged in serious conversations about the team’s sale since early 2023.

“It was two, three years ago I started talking about a casino and a destination resort,” Cuban said. “I told you guys then, I wasn’t going to be the one to build it. It makes sense that (if) someone is going to come in as a partner and invest potentially billions of dollars, they’re going to want equity.”

Perhaps it’s cynical to compress the Adelson family’s purchasing interest in the Mavericks to this cause alone. Undeniably, though, legalizing gambling in Texas is an interest of the Sands company that Adelson and the Dumonts represent.

Through a political action committee called Texas Sands, Adelson has spent more than $2 million to fund state legislators and hire lobbyists within the state’s long-entrenched Republican government.

Cuban said he would be “as active as (he) needs to be” to assist measures that would lead to legal gambling, saying, ​​”I think it’s the right thing for the state of Texas.”

For now, however, sports gambling remains illegal in Texas for the foreseeable future.

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5168499/2023/12/29/mark-cuban-mavericks-sale-adelson-family/