Mark Cuban: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Billionaire

Mark Cuban is not the richest person on Earth.

With Forbes stating his net worth as $4.7 billion, he’s not even in the same orbit as Musk, Bezos, Gates and the rest of the 11-figure giants at the top of the heap.

But the bold and outspoken Dallas Mavericks owner is as famous as any billionaire in the world. A staple of both television and the tabloids for decades, Cuban is a self-made man who transformed a struggling NBA club into a championship franchise that now stands as one of the most valuable teams in the league.

Beyond the court, he’s known for his role as a prolific investor on ABC’s “Shark Tank.” The entrepreneurial reality TV show has kept Cuban in the public eye and at the top of the list of the country’s most famous celebrity moguls since 2011.

Even so, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about Cuban. Keep reading to learn some fun facts about one of the country’s most talked-about billionaires.

Elon Musk is still the world’s most prominent crypto influencer, but it’s hard to imagine that any celebrity billionaire is more heavily invested in digital currency than Cuban. At the beginning of 2022, Cuban said on Jon Stewart’s podcast that 80% of his non-“Shark Tank” investments were related to crypto.

Considering that Bitcoin lost half its value and the cryptocurrency market shed $2 trillion between then and mid-June, it’s safe to say the last two fiscal quarters have been unkind to Cuban.

According to CNBC, Cuban has long said he never thought of the Mavericks as an investment and that he bought the team purely for his love for basketball.

Forbes values the Mavericks at $2.7 billion, making it the NBA’s No. 9 most valuable team — but in an indirect way, basketball was the source of the money that Cuban used to buy the Mavs in the first place.

It’s common knowledge that Cuban rose to early internet stardom when he founded Broadcast.com in 1995 with fellow Indiana University graduate Todd Wagner. What’s less known is that the pair created the pioneering video portal so they could catch Hoosiers basketball games while living in Dallas, according to Forbes.

In 1999, they sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion.

In 1999 — the same year that Cuban sold his company and entered the three-comma club — Guinness World Records gave the e-tycoon a place in its hallowed pages.

In October of that year, according to CNBC, Cuban fulfilled his lifelong dream of buying a private jet. His new Gulfstream V set him back $40 million; and, being a dot-com pioneer, he naturally made the purchase online. It was the largest single e-commerce transaction in history — and Cuban was officially in the record books.

Cuban is the human embodiment of the entrepreneurial spirit. A self-made man, he has been earning money in one way or another since before he was a teenager.

According to CNBC, he began selling garbage bags at 12 years old to buy the sneakers he wanted. As a teenager, he earned money buying and selling collectibles like baseball cards, stamps and coins. He later worked as a box boy, laid carpet and worked at a deli. After that, he earned $25 an hour giving disco lessons to pay his way through college.

The best-known of Cuban’s formative work stories is the famous tale of the software company that fired him for closing a $15,000 sale instead of cleaning the store. That experience spurred him to branch out on his own.

Like basketball, Cuban has both a passion for and a financial interest in film and television — and not just because of “Shark Tank.” He owns or is invested in well over 200 companies, including several in the film and TV industry, like Magnolia Pictures and the streaming platform Philo.

He has 58 producer credits, including hits like “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Road” and “We Own the Night.” He also has 33 acting credits — not counting his 178 appearances as himself. Cuban has been nominated for four Primetime Emmys.