The NBA board of governors approved Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban’s sale of a majority stake of the franchise to casino mogul Miriam Adelson and her family, the league said Wednesday. Cuban is retaining shares of the team and control of basketball operations as part of the unique deal.
Patrick Dumont, Adelson’s son-in-law and the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp., will serve as the Mavericks’ governor, the NBA said. The deal is expected to close this week.
Adelson is the largest shareholder in Las Vegas Sands Corp., which was formerly owned and run by her late husband, Sheldon Adelson. She is one of the richest people in the world; Forbes named her the 35th-richest this year and the fifth-richest woman, with an estimated net worth of $32.3 billion. Las Vegas Sands Corp. had $2.8 billion in revenue in the third quarter of its fiscal year alone. Sheldon Adelson was a casino tycoon who built The Venetian and The Palazzo in Las Vegas and then several other casino resorts in Singapore and Macao.
He and Miriam Adelson were prominent Republican donors and contributors to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, as well as supporters of Israel and Jewish causes. They donated $180 million to Republican campaigns and political action committees in 2020, according to Forbes, and have given nearly $500 million to Birthright Israel over the last two decades. The family also owns two daily newspapers — Israel Hayom in Israel and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. announced in a November SEC filing that Miriam Adelson was selling $2 billion worth of stock in the company to put towards buying a majority stake in a sports franchise, along with her own cash. This is approximately 10 percent of her stake in the company.
With the purchase, Adelson becomes just the third woman to be the principal owner of an NBA team at this moment, along with Los Angeles Lakers’ Jeanie Buss and New Orleans Pelicans’ Gayle Benson. Jody Allen runs the Portland Trail Blazers as chairwoman of the Paul G. Allen Trust.
Cuban bought the Mavericks in 2000 for $285 million and while he did not make his initial wealth through the team — he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo! in 1999 at the height of the dot com boom — Cuban did gain a measure of fame and standing as its owner. He was loud and visible in Dallas, often haranguing referees from his courtside seat early in his tenure, but the Mavericks made two NBA Finals and made the playoffs in all but five seasons he has owned the team.
The Mavericks are the third NBA team to change majority ownership in the last year. Billionaire mortgage lender Mat Ishbia and his brother Justin purchased a controlling stake of the Phoenix Suns in a deal that valued the team at $4 billion. A group led by Gabe Plotkin and Rick Schnall bought Michael Jordan’s majority stake in the Charlotte Hornets in a deal approved by the NBA’s board of governors in July.
Dallas is 18-12 this season, fifth in the Western Conference.
Why Cuban made the move
This transaction is as interesting as it is surprising. At a time when the NBA, and every other sports league, is leaning into sports betting, the Mavericks are being bought by the family of one of the country’s largest casino tycoons, Sheldon Adelson, who died in 2021. Miriam Adelson and The Miriam Adelson Trust lead a group that owns 57 percent of Las Vegas Sands Corp., which owns and operates casinos all around the world.
This is the second basketball team the Adelson family bought this year. Matan Adelson, Miriam’s son, bought Hapoel Jerusalem, an Israeli club that also plays in EuroCup, this summer.
It’s also a win for Cuban, who gets to keep running basketball ops despite selling most of his shares. — Mike Vorkunov, national basketball business reporter
Cuban already handed over some front-office influence
Cuban’s identity has been so tightly entwined with the Mavericks since he purchased the team in 2000 that his decision to sell is shocking. But it’s why he’s obtained something unprecedented: continued control of basketball operations, which Cuban has long been known for.
Since Nico Harrison was hired as general manager in 2021, Cuban has been a less influential figure in front-office matters: still actively involved and aware of what’s happening but leaving more of those decisions to Harrison, who has brought a much more rigid structure to the team than it had in the past under former general manager Donnie Nelson.
We might not know what Cuban’s unique arrangement means, on a functional level, until more time has passed. Perhaps there’s something else that Cuban’s decision to sell is leading to, but there’s no question that the Mavericks are heading into an unknown future. — Tim Cato, Mavericks staff writer
Required reading
(Photo: Petre Thomas / USA Today)
