Day . I am a graduate of duke university. I got a scholarship to go there, but not a basketball scholarship , i assure you. But i really would like to own an nba team. I have never had the chance to do so. But mark cuban is someone that 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 have always admired his sports progress, his knowledge, and his business acumen. My children always told me, dad, youve done ok, but mark cuban is a lot better. Mark, let me ask you this. You have, at an early age, made some money. You made an enormous amount of money when you sold broadcast. Com to yahoo and made over 1 billion. And then you bought a Basketball Team. Then you have a shark tank was quote series that won an emmy 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 . Is there something about this life that is not perfect . Mark i have kids. I have a 16yearold daughter and a 14yearold daughter. That is all any parent needs to hear. It doesnt matter what you have or what you 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, as everybody knows. David i have three children as well and i agree. You grew up in pittsburgh, but not in 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. And so, as a sophomore and junior, there were only senior economics classes. Just to spite them, i started taking classes at night in my junior year and dropped out of high school for my senior year and went to university of pittsburgh and took classes there. David then you went to Indiana University. Why did you go to indiana . Mark because pitt did not have a full undergrad Business Program and i saw a list of the top 10 undergrad programs and picked out the cheapest one. I went it was indiana and i went there sight unseen. David when you were there, you started a successful bar . Mark kind of successful. My parents did not 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, just saving money from jobs. Other times it was the hustle. David when you graduated, you moved to dallas. Why . Mark i had a bunch of buddies down there that had gone to indiana and moved to dallas. I was talking to one of my buddies, greg schiffer, on the phone. He is like, mark, the weather is great, the women are beautiful, the economy is good. I like, wait, back up. [laughter] im coming. David you started a Technology Consulting firm, is that what it was . There ien i first got was sleeping in 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. So i started my own company, micro solutions, which at the time we started was just a Pc Consulting company. David you sold that for a couple Million Dollars or so. Mark i sold it for 6 million. Of which 1 million went to all the employees. 2 million went to a partner and 2 million came to me. David you got 2 million, which is a kings ransom in those days for somebody your age, right . Mark by the time we closed i was 30. I thought i was the luckiest guy and richest guy in the world. This was 1989. I was going to take time off. My driving force was i wanted to retire by the time i was 35. One thing my dad had always really taught me and really 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 in an accident 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 type of work he did not want me to do. My goal was to retire so i could enjoy my life. So we sold micro solutions. I literally retired, a lifetime what a bought 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, which was to listen to Indiana University basketball games on a streaming process. Is that right . 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 local wide area networks. So i got to understand networking and technology really well. I made a lot of money actually after work just Trading Technology stocks. Back then, it was so much easier. I called up Goldman Sachs for ainslie and we would just four lee ainslie and we would just swap ideas. I knew more about the details of tech, what worked and what didnt work and what companies were doing well, and ended up making 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. 1995, 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 there and tried to figure out how we would do that. It went from 10 people the first to 1000, 20, 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 it was the largest first day ipo bump in the history of the stock market at the time. Did you say, im going to build this Company Forever and keep growing, or did somebody buy it from you . Mark the goal was to dominate, because we called it net casting at the time and this was preyoutube. Literally 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. And we bought 10 of what turned out to be lionsgate studios. We bought video rights to all these libraries. So, you know, we were making acquisitions. We really were on the path to dominate. And we had 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 and you are the leader. Lets combine forces and they gave us an offer we couldnt refuse. David they offered, i think roughly ultimately you 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. But you had a lot of it. Mark about 33 of it. And it was taxable. The way it was structured, it ended up being taxable on the gains. But, yeah, it turned out well. David you bought the dallas Basketball Team, the mavericks, for roughly 280 million. What compelled 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 i have 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 actually hedged it, right . I mentioned i traded stocks and did really, really well. I watched complete industries skyrocket and then collapse. 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 going up and i made money shorting them on the way down. I was clear to Goldman Sachs at the time that i wanted to do a hedge. The first thing i did, because i had a sixmonth moratorium where i couldnt do anything. So 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 just all gone, which was good, because that got me to the point where yahoo was still a high flyer. And i sold covered calls and bought puts over the next three years and that hedge saved me and actually made me money. David but you lost the first 20 million . Mark yes. 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 already knew ofroximately, 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 a put on the yahoo stock. When the stock collapsed, my puts were worth a fortune. David you bought the dallas Basketball Team, the 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 compelled you to buy a Basketball Team . Mark i have always been a basketball junkie as long as i can remember. I was a Dallas Mavericks season ticket holder. During that time that i owned season tickets, they were awful. All of the 1990s they were voted the worst professional sports franchise of the 1990s. I will never forget, it is the 19992000 Season Opener and we are undefeated. 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, wait, i can put my money where my mouth is finally and not just say it, inquire about buying it. From late october, when the topic first came up, it took till january 4 to close the deal. Honestly, i didnt even 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. So there were days still then this is before the internet bubble collapsed i remember being on the team bus in january talking to the coaches and i was like, why did you spend so much money . This is the worst franchise in all the nba. The revenues are lower than everybody else. Im like, let me just show you the price of yahoo . It went up 200 today. And that paid for the whole team. When you buy a Basketball Team you get to play with the players . Can you work out with them . Mark up until, obviously, the changes with this season. Before every home game, i go on the court and get shots up. There is nothing crazier to me as a basketball junkie, exciting, then to have an arena and you are out there shooting. There were a lot of times over the years i would play oneonone with the players and shoot threes. David they dont ease up . When you are playing with them, they dont ease up to let you win because you are the owner . Mark hell no. Realize the other side of it. If i beat them, they will never hear the end of it. There is just no way. No way. David you have been the owner of the team for 20 years. In your early years as the owner, and maybe recently, youve been fined a lot by the league maybe more than any other owner criticizing the four referees, criticizing the league. What was all of that about . Did you do that on purpose because he wanted attention, or could you not constrain yourself . Mark no, it was because i wanted to improve the league. When i first got to the nba, i nba they did not know what the product was. I was clear we dont sell basketball, we sell experiences. If you think about the sporting events you have gone to, you dont remember the score, the touchdowns, the dunks, the jumpers, you remember who you were with. The first time i parent took you, the first time you were with your friends, or the time you had your buddys bachelor party, or your 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. But to his credit, while he had to fine me, privately he would agree with me on a lot of those things. So, to me, i was just being a good partner. Even though a lot of my partners did not appreciate it. David in the early days, you were a young owner. Now you have been an owner for 20 years. You may be one of the more experienced owners. Do you get people listening to you more . Mark like you said, i one of am the longerterm owners. I will still raise hell and speak up. They are used to me. They have changed a lot. A lot of things have changed, whether how we approach officiating, to how we market our 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 . And are you surprised it has worked out reasonably well . It could be done better . Mark it is shocking how well it has gone. Just is so much risk bringing a large group of people, thousands of people together in one area, and to have zero cases . That is stunning. Stunning. Literally, we were concerned about what might happen. Because primarily you are talking about a population of 20somethings. As you can see, outside the bubble, 20somethings in any city, they are not the most conscientious when it comes to Wearing Masks and following social distancing and other protocols. So, to our players and staff and disney and the nba, to their credit everybody has been really, really careful and it has paid off. David Dirk Nowitzki was one of your star players for a while. I european. You have a couple other europeans now who are stars as well. One of them you traded, you got from the new york knicks, a trade President Trump commended you on, i recall. Let me ask you this, though. When are you going to recruit more jewish basketball players in the nba . Mark i dont care if they are from mars. Right . You know, i am fine with that. I dont care. 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 almost 10 years old. Larry obrien back there needs some friends. Then i put together a team to look at, what is the new normal . What does it mean now 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 . Ofn this pandemic hit, 93 the smithsonian staff had to go to telework. It taught me to think very differently and use this as an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about structure, about the way we do business. So my goal is to come out of it better and stronger. David when the smithsonian does reopen, eventually, will people be required to wear a mask . Everybody is going to 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 about the lessons you have learned, what lessons have you personally learned . What i have learned is one of the biggest lessons is, i dont have to have my fingerprints on everything. 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 pandemic, the dual pandemics of the virus and racism, have inspired me even more to struggle to help a country understand itself better and to find a country that is freer and fairer. David you have very much of an everyman image where you are in 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, and maybe jeff bezos is. You have a lot of technology knowledge, but you dont advertise as much. Mark before i got fired, it became clear to me that when it came to technology, there were two people 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 time and put in the effort to learn about that technology, i was going to move ahead of the 99 . Maybe never catch the person or 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. But you have a big Investment Business and you have said publicly that you are a gigantic investor in amazon and netflix and other companies. You have advisors or do you make your own decisions . Mark pretty much make my own decisions. I used to trade a lot. I used to be very active as a trader. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s there was less money chasing more stocks. And now there is a lot more money chasing fewer stocks. It is harder to trade and be successful, so i stick to the companies i believe in. Ive owned netflix since it was 50. And amazon, i was buying between 500 and 700. I actually bought some more in the high thousands. But ive got some scattered things beyond that that i have held on to. I no longer trade. That fed inflation of Financial Assets kind of gives us a tailwind. David covid, you have said, has changed the world in terms of opportunities. It is obviously hurt people, but has obviously helped people who are entrepreneurial. You have said this is a good time to figure out new businesses, 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 Retail Stores are closing. Malls are going bankrupt. Companies that are unable to transition to selling digitally or really not taking full advantage of eco