Mark Cuban

Mark Cuban
Born	(1958-07-31) July 31, 1958 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Occupation(s)	Owner of Dallas Mavericks, co-owner of 2929 Entertainment, and Chairman of HDNet
Spouse	Tiffany Stewart (2002 - present)
Children	2 daughters

Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American billionaire entrepreneur. He is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA franchise and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network.

Early life

Mark Cuban grew up in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania; a suburb of Pittsburgh in a working class family; his father was an automobile upholsterer. Cuban's first step into the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags in order to pay for a pair of expensive basketball shoes. While in school, he held a variety of jobs, including bartending, disco dancing instructor, and party promotion. He earned his way to college by collecting and selling stamps, and once gained about $1,100 from starting a chain letter.

Rather than attending high school for his senior year, Cuban enrolled as a full time student at the University of Pittsburgh, becoming a member of Pi Lambda Phi International Fraternity. After one year at the University of Pittsburgh, he transferred to Indiana University's Bloomington, Indiana campus and graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration. He lived in the Read Residence Hall at Indiana. He played rugby union football while at Indiana, taking up the position of number 8.

Bartender to dot-com billionaire

In 1982, Cuban moved to Dallas, Texas. Cuban first found work as a bartender, then as a salesperson for Your Business Software, one of the first PC software retailers in Dallas. He was terminated less than a year later for not opening the store on time while out making a sales call finalizing a large software purchase with a customer.

Cuban started a company, MicroSolutions, with support from his previous customers from Your Business Software. MicroSolutions was initially a system integrator and software reseller. The company was an early proponent of technologies such as Carbon Copy, Lotus Notes, and CompuServe. One of the company's largest clients was Perot Systems. In 1990, Cuban sold MicroSolutions to Compuserve—then a subsidiary of H&R Block—for $6 million. He netted approximately $2 million after taxes on the deal.

In 1995, Cuban and fellow Indiana University alum Todd Wagner started Audionet, combining their mutual interest in college basketball and webcasting. With a single server and ISDN line, Audionet became Broadcast.com in 1998. By 1999, Broadcast.com had grown to 330 employees and annual revenues near $100 million. During the Dot-com boom, Broadcast.com was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.9 billion in Yahoo! stock.

Billionaire entrepreneur

After the sale, Cuban diversified his wealth to avoid exposure to a market crash. As of 2007, Cuban is #407 on Forbes' "World's Richest People" list, with a net worth of $2.3 billion. The Guinness Book of Records credits Cuban with the "largest single e-commerce transaction," $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in October 1999.

Cuban continues to work with Wagner in another venture, 2929 Entertainment, which provides vertically integrated production and distribution of films and video. On September 24 2003, the firm purchased Landmark Theatres, a chain of 58 arthouse movie theaters. The company is also responsible for the updated version of the TV show Star Search, which was broadcast on CBS. 2929 Entertainment released Bubble, a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, in theaters and on DVD on the same day in January 2006 as a simultaneous release.

Cuban was featured on the cover of the November 2003 premiere issue of Best magazine, announcing the arrival of High Definition Television. Cuban also was co-founder (with Philip Garvin) of HDNet, the first high-definition satellite television network.

In February 2004, Cuban announced that he would be working with ABC television to produce a reality television series called The Benefactor. The premise of the six-episode series involved 16 contestants vying to win $1 million by participating in various contests, with their performances being judged by Cuban. It premiered on September 13, 2004 but, due to poor ratings, was cancelled before the full season aired.

Cuban financially supported Grokster in the Supreme Court case, MGM v. Grokster. He is also a partner in Synergy Sports Technology, a web based basketball scouting and video delivery tool, used by many NBA teams.

Recently, Cuban has spearheaded ventures in the social software and distributed networking industries. He's an owner of IceRocket, a search engine which scours the blogosphere for content. Cuban is also a partner in RedSwoosh — a company which uses peer-to-peer technology to deliver rich media, including video and software to a user's PC. He was also an investor in Weblogs, Inc. which was acquired by AOL.

In 2005, Cuban invested in Brondell Inc., a San Francisco startup making a high-tech toilet seat called a Swash that works like a bidet but mounts on a standard toilet. "People tend to approach technology the same way," Cuban joked, "whether it's in front of them, or behind them." He also invested in Goowy Media Inc., a San Diego internet software startup.

In April 2006, Sirius Satellite Radio announced that Cuban would host his own weekly radio talk show, Mark Cuban's Radio Maverick. However, the show has not materialized.

In July 2006, Cuban financed Sharesleuth.com, a web site created by former St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Christopher Carey to uncover fraud and misinformation in publicly traded companies. Experimenting with a new business model for making online journalism financially viable, Cuban disclosed he would take positions in the shares of companies mentioned in Sharesleuth.com in advance of publication. Business and legal analysts questioned the appropriateness of shorting a stock prior to making public pronouncements which are likely to result in losses in that stock's value. Cuban insisted that the practice is legal in view of full disclosure.

In September 2007, Cuban, in his capacity as owner of Magnolia Pictures, "redacted" disturbing photographs from the concluding moments of Brian DePalma's film "Redacted." DePalma and his producer have expressed fierce opposition to Cuban's actions. http://gothamist.com/2007/10/11/video_of_the_da_121.php

Dallas Mavericks

Ownership

On January 14, 2000, Cuban purchased a majority stake in the NBA Dallas Mavericks basketball team for $285 million from H. Ross Perot, Jr.

In the 20 years before Cuban bought the team, the Mavs had a winning percentage of 40%, and playoff record of 21-32. The team had never advanced beyond early rounds in the playoffs. In the six years following, the team has won 69% of their regular season games and have reached the playoffs each season. The Mavs playoff record with Cuban is 39 wins and 40 losses, including their first trip to the NBA Finals in 2006, where they lost to the Miami Heat.

Historically, NBA team owners publicly play more passive roles and watch basketball games from skyboxes; Cuban sits alongside fans while donning team jerseys. Cuban flies his private airplane, a Gulfstream Aerospace Gulfstream V to attend away games. His ownership has been described by the media as the ultimate fan fantasy successfully coming true.

NBA policy maverick

Cuban's ownership has been the source of extensive media attention and controversy involving league policies.

Cuban has been fined by the NBA, mostly for critical statements about the league and referees, at least $1,665,000 for 13 incidents. In a June 30, 2006 interview, Mavericks player Dirk Nowitzki said about Cuban,

He's got to learn how to control himself as well as the players do. We can't lose our temper all the time on the court or off the court, and I think he's got to learn that, too. He's got to improve in that area and not yell at the officials the whole game. I don't think that helps us.... He sits right there by our bench. I think it's a bit much. But we all told him this before. It's nothing new. The game starts, and he's already yelling at them. So he needs to know how to control himself a little.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Cuban said that he matches NBA fines with charitable donations of equal amounts. In a nationally publicized incident, he criticized the league's manager of officials, Ed T. Rush, saying that he, "wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen." When Dairy Queen management took offense, Cuban worked for a day at a Dairy Queen in Coppell, Texas, where fans lined up in the street to get a Blizzard from the owner of the Mavericks.

During the 2005-06 NBA season, Cuban started a booing campaign when former Maverick player Michael Finley returned to play against the Mavs as a member of the San Antonio Spurs. In a playoff series between the Mavericks and Spurs, Cuban cursed Spurs forward Bruce Bowen. and was fined $200,000 by the NBA for rushing onto the court and criticizing NBA officials.. After the 2006 NBA Finals, Cuban was fined $250,000 by the NBA for repeated misconduct following the Mavericks' loss to the Miami Heat in Game Five of the 2006 NBA Finals.

In February 2007, Cuban publicly criticized NBA Finals MVP Dwyane Wade, and declared that he would get fined if he made any comments about what he thought really happened in the 2006 NBA Finals.

Other sports businesses

In 2005, Cuban expressed interest in buying the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins. In 2006, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported Cuban had joined an investment group with Dan Marino, Kevin Millevoi, Andy Murstein, and Walnut Capital principals Gregg Perelman and Todd Reidbord to acquire the Pittsburgh Penguins..

At World Wrestling Entertainment's 2003 Survivor Series, Cuban was involved in a staged altercation with RAW GM Eric Bischoff and RAW Superstar Randy Orton.

Cuban has also expressed interest in owning a Major League Baseball team, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Chicago Cubs It was announced in April 2007 that the Cubs will go on sale once the Chicago Tribune's sale to Sam Zell is finalized, but Cuban refused to speculate on purchasing the club when it was not officially on the market. On July 12, 2007, Cuban sent in an application to MLB to purchase the Chicago Cubs, which along with Wrigley Field and the Cubs Television Contract could go as high as $1 billion. On October 8, 2007, he said he would likely bid on the team, calling it "an opportunity [he] couldn't let slip by" and also reinterated his interest in the team on the Jimmy Kimmel show on November 3rd, 2007, during his interview following his elimination from ABC's "Dancing with the Stars". If he buys the Cubs, Cuban wants to join Derek Schaul and become a bleacher bum. Cuban is easily the favorite in the minds of Cub fans of those in contention for the job, as many Cub fans have been emailing him for years asking him to buy the team from the Chicago Tribune.

In May 2007, a possible new American football league called the UFL being set up by Wall Street businessman Bill Hambrecht was announced, including possible team ownership of a Las Vegas franchise by Cuban.

On September 12, 2007, Cuban said that he was in talks with the Vince, Linda and Stephanie and Shane McMahon of the World Wrestling Entertainment in creating a mixed martial arts company that would compete with Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Cuban followed up his intentions by organizing "HDNet Fights" a mixed martial arts promotion which airs exclusively on HDNet and premiered on October 13, 2007 with a card headlined by a fight between Erik Paulson and Jeff Ford as well as fights featuring veterans Drew Fickett and Justin Ellers. [2]

Family and personal interests

In September 2002, Cuban married Tiffany Stewart, an advertising executive, in a private ceremony in Barbados. The couple had their first child in September 2004. In June 2007, Cuban underwent hip replacement surgery. The family lives in the lavish Highland Park area of Dallas.

Cuban is an admirer of Objectivist philosophy and author/philosopher Ayn Rand: "The Fountainhead was incredibly motivating to me. It encouraged me to think as an individual, take risks to reach my goals, and responsibility for my successes and failures. I loved it." His political views lean towards libertarianism, however, he holds a position on a centrist Unity08 political organization's advisory council.

Controversy

Cuban has financed the movie Redacted, a docudrama based on the Mahmudiyah killings, the rape, murder, and burning of Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi girl in March 2006 by U.S. soldiers, who also killed her parents and younger sister. The film provoked anger from critics who believe it will be used as propaganda against U.S. forces in the war on terror.

Fallen Patriot Fund

Cuban started the Fallen Patriot Fund to help families of U.S. military persons killed or injured during the Iraq War, personally matching the first $1 million in contributions with funds from the Mark Cuban Foundation.

Film and television appearances

Acting roles

• Breaking the F-ing Rules (2007 film) as "Seamus"
• All In (2006 film) as himself
• Like Mike 2: Streetball (2006 film) as "Drop Squad Coach"
• Walker, Texas Ranger (TV Series, 2000) as "Mark Smith"
• Lost at Sea (1995 film) as "Villain"
• Talking About Sex (1994 film) as "Macho Mark"

As himself

• Dancing With The Stars (2007)
• The Loop (TV Series, 2007)
• The Benefactor (2004), a TV Series starring Cuban.
• The Cookout (2004)
• Cuban has also made many appearances as himself in movies and other television shows.

External links

• Mark Cuban's personal weblog
• Beyond the Glory Biography of Mark Cuban
• Mark Cuban Interview with Gelf Magazine
• Mark Cuban at IMDb