Extra: Mark Cuban Full Interview

A conversation with the Shark Tank star, entrepreneur, and Dallas Mavericks owner recorded for the Freakonomics Radio series “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Angie. Angie has been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years, and they've made it easier than ever to tackle home projects. Their nationwide network has experts in everything from plumbing and landscaping to roofing, remodels, and more. You can read verified reviews and request and compare quotes to find your best price. So join the millions of homeowners who use Angie to get the job done well. Download the Angie app today or visit angie.com.

• 0:38Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:09Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 1:47Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 2:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey there. It's Stephen Dubner. Before we get to this bonus episode, a quick offer. If you happen to be a member of 24 Hour Fitness, the national gym chain, and you want to be part of a behavioral science experiment, go to 24go.co/freak. That's 24go.co/freak. You can enroll there in a program called Step Up, which was created by our friends at Behavior Change for Good. That's a group of scientists who are running big experiments to help people achieve better outcomes in health, education, and personal finance. You've heard about their work in a couple of previous episodes. One was called "How to Launch a Behavior Change

• 3:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  Revolution." The other was "Could Solving This One Problem Solve All the Others?" The deadline for Step Up is January 31st, so hurry. Again, it's 24go.co/freak. That's 24go.co/freak. Now, on with our show.

• 3:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  This is a Freakonomics Radio Extra, our full interview with the entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who's been appearing in our Hidden Side of Sports series. Cuban has owned the Mavs since 2000, and he's one of the investors regularly appearing on the reality TV show Shark Tank. He made his fortune in the late 1990s, selling the streaming service Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Our conversation took place last summer before the current NBA season had begun. LeBron James was still a free agent at the time. The Mavs had already drafted the Slovenian teenager Luka Doncic, who's been having an excellent rookie season, even though the Mavs are doing poorly overall. The conversation

• 4:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  covers a lot of ground, including Cuban's ambitions to own a baseball team, and maybe, just maybe, his ambitions to run for president. You'll also hear a number of names that you may not be familiar with. Byron Wizard White, for instance, was a great collegiate athlete who played three seasons in the NFL, twice leading the league in rushing, but then left for law school and ultimately a seat on the US Supreme Court. The Rick that Cuban mentions is Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle. Tim Donahue is a former NBA ref who pled guilty to betting on games he was involved in. If there's anything else you don't catch, well, that's what Google is for. Thanks for listening.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  My name is Mark Cuban and you're listening to Freakonomics Radio.

• 4:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, this is Stephen Dubner. Hey, Mark Cuban, how's it going?

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Great, Stephen Dubner, how are you?

• 5:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Great, nice to talk to you. Congrats on Luka, do we say Doncic? How we say his last name?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Doncic, yeah.

• 5:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  Doncic, yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 5:08Stephen J. Dubner?

  Congratulations. Yeah, he looks amazing.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  We hope he is.

• 5:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  So let me ask you this, you're roughly 60 years old. You grew up in Pittsburgh, which is, you know, one of the best sports towns. I'm just curious, in a nutshell, how you think pro sports has changed since you were a kid?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. That's a big question. It depends on which sport, it depends on what city, depends on whose perspective. You know, I think, you know, pros, you know, in a lot of ways, it hasn't changed, but in a lot of ways, depending on what city you're in, your teams have come and gone, are better or worse, and, you know, it's just, it just depends on perspective.

• 5:49Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, let's pick a team. Let's pick the Steelers of your childhood and my childhood. You know, guys like Rocky Blyer and Andy Russell, even Franco, well, maybe not quite Franco, but these guys would typically work an off-season job and they weren't making money to retire on. And now, obviously, the economics are a lot different, but the economics are a lot different on the business side as well. There's just been tremendous, tremendous, tremendous growth. And I guess I'm curious, as sport has become such a massive and global business, whether you think that's basically made the product, the games, better, worse, different, how so?

• 6:26Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's made it better because it's, you know... It's an incentive for more people to become professional athletes. You know, for all the stories of athletes working in the summer, there's the Wizard Whites of the world and other athletes who chose not to go into professional sports at all. And so now the money creates enough of incentive. But again, that's just part of the equation. Now there's other issues. There's, you know, CTE for hockey and football. There's, you know, soccer is much more, is a much bigger sport in the US than it used to be when I was growing up. It wasn't even a varsity sport when I was in high school. And so a lot of things have changed.

• 7:04Stephen J. Dubner?

  You're best known probably for two things, Shark Tank and owning the Dallas Mavericks. Can you just give us a quick catalog of your other sports business interests?

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my goodness. You know, most of my other sports interests are driven through technology, whether it's Synergy Sports, which does cataloging and video of all things basketball. Sports Radar, which is an information service for sports. Unicorn, which is delivery for esports. It allows for tokenized betting for esports right now. Axon, which does neural development so that athletes can increase, improve their neurological responses to stimuli and their physical responses as a result.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Another company that uses virtual reality and like a weed-like technology to help kids and athletes and professionals improve their dribbling skills and other basketball skills.

• 8:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Now, I would say of everything that you just named there, if you were to rewind the tape to 40 years ago or 50 years ago and you were a kid, most of those would have been somewhere between unimaginable and, you know, not feasible. I mean, that's one direction in which sport has just blown up in terms of technology. Again, do you see the technology? And we hear all the time about how the data revolution is changing the way the game is played. I'm curious whether it's really having as big an impact as we'd like to think or imagine.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, analytics obviously has helped in terms of team strategy, but that's actually become a relatively efficient market because all teams are involved and they're all hiring smart people to do mostly the same things. And then there's bioanalytics where. We're becoming smarter about the body, nutrition, sleep, genetics. There's just so many, you know, elements involved with bioanalytics that it's, it's a never-ending improvement cycle.

• 9:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  So in terms of turnarounds, franchise turnarounds, your team, the Mavericks have been one of the most drastic. When you came in, the years, I guess the nine seasons before you arrived, the Mavs' winning percentage was about 40%.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were awful.

• 9:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  And since you've been there, about 70%. So that's really remarkable. So we could either say, I mean, if we're going to try to draw a causal relationship, we could say either Mark Cuban is one of the best owners ever, or he was really lucky to intersect perfectly with Dirk Nowitzki's career, or, you know, five, 10 other things. Can you just talk about what you did that you think worked? And what are the other factors that led to that success?

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Well, hopefully the two aren't mutually exclusive.

• 9:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I think sometimes when you're dealt a good hand, not screwing it up as a talent. But I think what I did was try to change the culture. Because like any work environment, you can have really, really talented people, but if they don't like coming to work, or they don't like working together, then you're not going to get optimal results. And so when I came in, the previous owner, you know, nickel and dimed everything, didn't recognize that the players were the key to the organization. You know, we did things like spend more money on computer repair and training than we did on medical issues and development for our players. And so I just changed that. I just flipped the script and said, look, my job is to provide the resources to put everybody in a position to succeed. And if I do that, good things will happen.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  And so, you know, we had Dirk, we had Steve Nash, we had Michael Finley. The same three guys were awful the year before I got there. The day I bought the team, our record was nine and 23, and we finished out the season, I think 31 and 19, and won 50 games the next season. So while I certainly didn't hit any jumpers, I think, you know, I recognized that there was an opportunity to invest in some great players and make them better at what they do.

• 11:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  What was the mental state of the organization in the building when you came in with that losing record that year?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Um, get me out of here. Everybody, it was a way station. If you couldn't get a job somewhere else, you came to the Mavericks. When players were traded here, they just couldn't wait to get out.

• 11:17Stephen J. Dubner?

  Your last couple of seasons, though, have been fairly stinky, at least by Mavs standards, so much so that you got a high draft pick this year. So what happened?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  What happens is guys get older, you know? Guys get injured. And so, you know, you play it out as long as you can, as best you can, and we try to respond and rebuild as quickly as possible. And hopefully with this summer, you know, with our draft picks and, and anybody we sign in free agency, we'll be able to do that and start fighting our way back.

• 11:43Stephen J. Dubner?

  You've been fined a few times by the NBA. Most recent one was 600K.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  For talking about that it was essentially in the best interest of the team to lose to get a higher draft pick.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 11:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Um, I'm just curious, you know, you're worth about 4 billion, um, from what I've seen. Do you care much? I, I mean, is that strategic, um, outspokenness?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  In that case, it wasn't. More often than not, it was. In that particular case, I was being interviewed by Julius Irving and I just fanboyed and said the wrong thing. Seriously. Julius Irving was like my boyhood basketball hero.

• 12:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, he was the one guy I looked up to. And it was the first time I'd met him. And to give you an idea of, you know, how much of a fanboy I am, um, of Julius Irving, when I was a kid, The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh, an old basketball movie, was being filmed at the Civic Arena and I took a bus down there just to see him. You know, just, just to be able to see Julius Irving, not playing basketball, just to see him. And then when I first bought the Mavs, I was at, um, an NBA All-Star game, I think it was in Philly, and I took a picture with Dr. J. He didn't know he was in the picture. It was me taking, having someone take a picture with him in it with me smiling, so. You know, and then when I, when he asked me to do his podcast, it was just like, yeah. And so I was trying to be too cool and, you know, try to impress him.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  And when I started talking about being a player's owner, you know, he said he would have liked to have played for me as an owner, then I had to show off and that's when I said the wrong thing.

• 13:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  What was it about Dr. J as a player that you love so much?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Oh, just his athleticism, you know, his winning attitude, his uniqueness, you know, on the court and off. He, he had a certain style that, you know, he didn't take any prisoners and he was who he was without regrets. And, and I always admire those qualities.

• 13:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  And this was also the ABA, which was the upstart league. I sense that you've kind of identified with upstarts throughout your life.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would, I would say underdogs more than upstarts. Maybe they're one in the same in a lot of instances, but um, it's not like I expected all this to happen. You know, and so, you know, every step of the way, I, I would try to just keep on grinding and, and try to accomplish what I could accomplish and go from there.

• 13:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  I am curious, um, who your favorite Steelers were.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Oh, Franco Harris, um, Mean Joe Green, Jack Lambert.

• 14:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  Any dark horses, any more obscure guys?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Joe Gillum, well, you would know the first black quarterback, um.

• 14:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Who else? Let me think. Um, there's a guy named Tunch Ilkin that, um.

• 14:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Tunch Ilkin, sure. He's still broadcasting for him.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Oh, is he really? Yeah.

• 14:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  And so Tunch came from Indiana State and we had a mutual friend. And so when he came to the Steelers, I would go hang out with him and some of the Steelers. And to tell you a quick story, one time we went out with Jack Lambert, Steve Corson, Tunch Ilkin, um, Lynn Swan to a place in Green Tree, Pennsylvania. Horrible snowy day. I had a nasty old 1977 Fiat X19, which was, is a, you know, tiny car. And, you know, they got out, left earlier before I did. I go out to find my car in the snow and they literally had picked it up between them and carried it up and put it on a hill. So that I had to go and figure out how to get it through the snow down a hill, back into the street.

• 14:56Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. So you did not become a professional athlete yourself, but you went one better and became a billionaire. And the story for people who don't know it, it reads like fiction. So can you just briefly tell us that story?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  I would tell you, we started the streaming industry. You know, there was a point in time in the early 90s where the internet was becoming functional. And, you know, one of my buddies from college was like, we've got to be able to use all this new internet stuff to be able to listen to Indiana basketball. And so I was like, okay, I'm a tech guy. Let me see if I can figure it out. And I had just sold a few years earlier, my first company, which was a networking company. So I was familiar with, with the technology and had a little bit of money. And so I went to work, bought a, you know, PC, a 90 megahertz Packard Bell, an ISDN line, and just started figuring out. And we created a website called AudioNet. Fast forward a few years, we go public. It's the biggest IPO in the history of the

• 15:51Speaker 01

  stock market. And what you probably don't realize is, we dominated all things audio and video on the internet. There was nobody close. As dominant as YouTube is today, we were that dominant then. We had a unique opportunity that when we sold to Yahoo, if they would have kept on doing what we were doing, even after the, the stock market bubble had burst, there would be no YouTube. There might not even be a Google. I mean, you know, they, they chose the direction and they chose to de-invest when, you know, Google chose the opposite to invest and that changed the course of history for streaming.

• 16:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  So that was nearly 20 years ago. That was 99 that you sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can I ask you to speculate a little bit, maybe not looking 20 years forward, but maybe five or 10, big live sport events are in some ways keeping the legacy broadcast networks alive. They are one of the few destination points for, for watching TV these days. I'm really curious, you know, the streaming companies and companies like Amazon that have streaming as well, they have so much money now that I'm guessing, I mean, they could, they could buy the leagues if they wanted to. So I'm really, I'm really curious to know what you see the future of watching sports looks like. And will it be kind of gradually changed so that we won't even notice so much? Or do you think it'll be radically different than now?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I think it'll be gradual, but it'll be different for a couple of different reasons. One, one of the reasons sports are still so prevalent on traditional television is it's a destination. If you want to watch the Mavericks, if you don't watch the Pirates, if you don't watch the Penguins, the Dallas Stars, whatever, you have to go to traditional TV. And that's one of the keys to retaining the customers, the subscribers that they have, particularly for older viewers. Which leads to a big question that'll drive some of this at some level. When people turn 40, 50, 60, do they start consuming more television?

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Or will millennials, as they age, stick to traditional digital over-the-top? That's the unknown question, because for over-the-top, you still have to do work. You still have to choose from 20 apps, 30 apps, which is more annoying than going through a DirecTV programming guide. And so, those things have to improve dramatically, I think, before older consumers switch from traditional television. All that said, one of the challenges for over-the-top is that there's an unlimited number of choices. When you go on Charter, Comcast, DirecTV, AT&T, whatever, you've got 250, 300 choices, maybe.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  And that might be daunting, but it's still somewhat manageable. When you go online, there's a zillion choices. There's no limit to the number of choices. You could spend a day in YouTube, so destination content is much rarer. There aren't a lot of hits online. And even when you see YouTube stars or Instagram stars, they have to create content every single day. And the same applies to Twitch. Ninja has got to be playing... There's a thing from Ninja, the guy who's the Fortnite superstar, that when he didn't broadcast one day, he lost 40,000 subscribers. So it's a whole different beast. And so...

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Over the top, you know, when it comes to sports, I think the license value of the NBA, college sports, etc., is going to escalate significantly because it's harder to draw an audience over the top. And for the reason you mentioned, right now, the market caps are bigger than, you know, the fangs, the top five or six different online media companies just dwarfs traditional media. So I think a lot's going to change. Then you add the impact of 5G. And so 5G is smaller cells, but much higher bandwidth, which means you can broadcast different types of things at higher bit rates. And it also may lead to

• 19:52Speaker 01

  people cutting the broadband cord. So all that money you paid for your internet subscription, you might be paying 50 bucks, 75, 100 bucks a month for broadband, that might go away. And the same subscription you use for your phone, you might use for your broadband as well, which can in turn change how we consume content as well.

• 20:11Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Let me ask you this. Let's look at individual sports or leagues, especially with the future of the way the material is distributed and the future of those games or leagues themselves. So let's pretend that you have the choice of three stocks to buy. And I'm going to make you, I'm going to make you buy one, sell one, and hold one. And the three are going to be NFL, UFC, and we'll say a basket of esports leagues or games, Overwatch.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I take esports. Yeah, if it's against those three.

• 20:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  I take, I buy esports, sell NFL.

• 20:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Okay. And hold UFC for now.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:48Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay. Okay. So let's, let's get into both of those a little bit. First of all, why sell NFL?

• 20:52Speaker 01

  I just think CTE creates a problem. So participation has been dropping the last few years, and will continue to drop more. And, you know, I have an eight-year-old son. There's no way I'd let him play tackle football. My brother lets my nephew play high school football, but he's not that good. So it's not like he's got a future in football.

• 21:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. What about the political stuff that's happening? Mostly the anthem protests? Do you think that's legitimately hurting football or is that more of a side show?

• 21:21Speaker 01

  No, that's short term. Yeah, that's short term.

• 21:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so you think CTE is the biggest barrier?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, because a parent, if you don't want your son playing, your daughter, I guess, I don't want to be gender specific. But if you don't want your child playing contact football, then you know, you diminish the viewing in the house. It's like, I don't want my son to get excited about watching football. And in reality, you know, it's crazy because, you know, hey, let's watch a Cowboys game, let's watch a Steeler game. You know, when I was growing up, it was a certainty. That's what you did. You know, now, you know, he'd much rather play Fortnite or, you know, do other things than watch football.

• 22:00Stephen J. Dubner?

  So how do we explain, though, the success of UFC, especially given the concern over the NFL and the decline of boxing? I mean, boxing used to be the biggest sport in America and it went, you know, it was hurt for a lot of different reasons, obviously. But, but what do you think UFC, the league has done or the sport has done that the NFL maybe isn't doing as well?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  I think it's just different because it's individuals and individuals can make their own choices. You don't need a lot of participants, you know, in, in any given UFC fight, there's 10 matches, 20 guys. And so you don't need the number of participants that you do, obviously, you know, for football where there's 53 guys on a team. And, you know, 32 teams and then college football, high school football, et cetera.

• 22:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Okay. And you're buying esports. So say why and especially explain to people who can't get their mind around it at all. What is the appeal of watching? I mean, you know, especially Dallas where you are has become really, it's become a hotbed. Yeah, I mean, there's arenas, stadiums being built and so on. So why do 20, 50,000 people want to go to a stadium to watch other people play video games?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Because once you understand the game, it's like. Once you play, you understand the nuances of the game and it's aspirational and educational. And so, you know, if you like to play League of Legends, it's hard. But one of the ways to get better League of Legends is to watch other people play. And to learn the nuances and to learn the strategies, particularly given that they change the rules every 90 or 120 days. And so because of that, the esports teams have got to practice hours and hours and hours a day. So it takes a real skill. It's a real sport. And if you like it, you know, watching it is entertaining, educational, aspirational.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And you also have to realize that anybody in front of a PS2, Xbox, PC, you know, watching these kids that play. In their mind, you know, just like maybe we watched sports growing up, it's like, hey, if they can do it, I can do it. And so that's the aspirational part of it as well. There's no physical hurdles. You can be four foot one or seven foot one. And if you've got the hand-eye coordination and the brain processing speed and, you know, anything's possible, you could do it too.

• 24:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  One of the investments you mentioned, Unicorn, is a company that facilitates betting on esports. Can you just tell us a little bit about how that'll work? And whether gambling on esports is maybe a little bit more susceptible to match fixing than other sports or not necessarily?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, first, let me start there. I don't think it's more susceptible at all because it's much more difficult. You know, most esports are multi-dimensional chess where there's so many pieces involved that it'd be nearly impossible. There's just, you know, there's what, 2 billion different chess moves? And there's probably, you know, exponentially more in League of Legends. And, you know, and why Unicorn? Just because?

• 24:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. And how does it work? I mean, what kind of access will we have to what kind of bets?

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Well, you realize gambling is legal in 118 countries. And so right now for esports in those countries, you can just go bet on who wins and different prop bets, just like you could any other sports.

• 25:14Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you about American Pro Sports League. So you're an NBA owner. I don't know too much about how, quote, "the league" works. I know a little bit more about the NFL. But in the NFL, the owners are essentially the league.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:27Stephen J. Dubner?

  Is it much different in the NBA or is it pretty similar setup?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 25:31Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, all right.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  No, not really. Yeah, not really at all. I think the biggest difference between the NFL and the NBA is... The emphasis put on talent. In the NFL, they sell the NFL. In the NBA, we sell the talent, the players. We promote the players and they promote themselves because it's mutually beneficial. I, I think, you know, with the exception of just a few stars, this is just my opinion, the, the NFL appears to use their players, look at their players as being more fungible. You know, there's 53 of them. You're going to rotate X number through every year and, you know, honestly, if, you know, the entire Steelers team was in a mall and/or the entire Dallas Cowboys team was in a mall, maybe two or three of the players would get recognized.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  And so it's a different world.

• 26:18Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, no, it's partly because they're helmeted, yeah, but, but it's more than that, right?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not just because they're helmeted.

• 26:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Okay, so given that the leagues operate, you know, there's obviously a lot of differences, roster size, number of games, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But let's, let's assume that for the sake of argument, that all four major sports leagues in America are pretty similar in that they have, you know, it's a, it's a membership. And once you're in, you're in. And it's pretty hard to lose money as a professional sports team because of the way revenues are divided.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  No, that's not true at all. No, that is not true at all. Oh, hell no.

• 26:50Stephen J. Dubner?

  Give me, give me an example.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  I can't, I can't throw out names, but yeah.

• 26:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, how many NBA teams in a given year are going to lose money?

• 26:58Speaker 01

  More than you think.

• 26:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  Really?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  So even with the revenue sharing, with all the broadcasts and other monies distributed evenly, and with a salary cap that guarantees that you don't have to overspend a certain amount, you're saying that, how, how do you lose money? Is it by?

• 27:15Speaker 01

  Not everybody has enough.

• 27:16Stephen J. Dubner?

  Lacking gate revenue?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, lacking revenue, period.

• 27:19Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Just like any business.

• 27:21Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. But it, what's the major variable? Is it gate revenue or is it broadcast revenue?

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Gate, broadcast, players, all the obvious things.

• 27:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right, okay. So that said, leagues in major American pro sports are more protected than, let's say, you know, European soccer, right, where?

• 27:39Speaker 01

  Right, because there's no relegation.

• 27:40Stephen J. Dubner?

  Exactly. Uh, do you think, uh, and it's always funny because our capitalism is more cutthroat than theirs. They're a little bit more socialist, but we have the slightly more socialist setup.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:51Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you think there, which do you prefer? I guess I'd like to know.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Well, it depends where you are. Right, if you already have a significant brand like Real Madrid, you know, because you can spend more money than everybody else. And they've put some limits on how much money teams can lose and how much debt they can have, and that's impacted things. But if you're on the bottom and you can buy a team inexpensively, and you think you've got a secret formula that can get you into the Premier League, et cetera, then that's the position you want to be in. If you're on the top and there's nothing that's going to impact your revenues and your global brand and you generate licensing and other incomes globally, you want to be at the top. You know, the NBA, we're a global brand,

• 28:39Speaker 01

  but the Dallas Mavericks get 1/30 of anything sold, whether it's in China, or Germany, or San Francisco. You know, we don't control the generation of revenues for ourselves, except in our local markets.

• 28:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  In what league in US sports do you think players, the athletes, have the most leverage and the least leverage?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  I'd say the NBA and the NFL.

• 29:06Stephen J. Dubner?

  And NBA is most and NFL is least?

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Without question.

• 29:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  And does that have to do with roster size primarily? Or does it go beyond that?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Roster size, injury, contact, sports, you know, the number of college football teams providing talent. The fact that they go four years, so you get to see, most of them go four years, so it's easier to evaluate talent.

• 29:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. Speaking of college football, what's your overall view of the NCAA?

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I think it's worthless.

• 29:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Obviously, there's a lot of incentive to keep it as it is. A lot of people are benefiting, although you could easily argue that the one set of people who should be benefiting, the people who are actually providing the physical labor, are not benefiting very much. If you could blow it up entirely, what would you do? Would you have football attached to college at all? Would you make it some sort of a D-league instead?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't mind having it attached to college, but I would make it an independent entity. So it would operate independently. You know, look, if I wanted to create a League of Legends team... It's not NCAA bound, so you know, I can pay players if I choose or you know, incent them. I can, you know, let them have a job, right? Let them go get a job. Let them practice as much as they need to, much as I could if I wanted to create a band. And I went to Indiana University, my alma mater and found, which has a great music school, and found the best musicians for the band I want to put together. I can pay them and they can stay in school. They can practice together as much as they want. You know, that's the

• 30:39Speaker 01

  hypocrisy. If you want to be a professional athlete, you can't practice your craft as much as you would like. There's limits to coaching and playing with your teammates. There's limits on jobs you can take. There's, there's so many different things that are bound in stone that it just doesn't make sense. And so there's reasons why they, they evolved to where they are, but it, it's time to take a whole different look.

• 31:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. Um, do you know Dominique Foxworth? He was the

• 31:06Speaker 01

  No, I do not.

• 31:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  He was the number two at the NBA Players Association for a while. He, he was the president of the NFL Players Association. He was a player. He was a cornerback, played for, uh, I guess Denver, Atlanta, then Baltimore. So he's an interesting guy. Um, a career cut short by injury, but he cashed out because he had insurance. Um, and now he's kind of midlife, early 30s, and he's looking back and trying to figure out how to help the next generation of athlete do better. He told us that he thinks it would be in the best interest of players to dissolve the unions, the NFLPA, um, the NBA Players Association, because that would put the leagues in violation of labor laws and it would give players the power to negotiate better deals and to make more money. I'd never

• 31:50Speaker 01

  They do that every, every time there's a lock. Look, I'm not a CBA expert. I can't get into details, but you know, you know, the NFL, there's, there's a long history of labor unrest and the first thing they do is dissolve the union.

• 32:01Stephen J. Dubner?

  Well, let's say that for a minute, you're not on the ownership side at all and that you're either with the, you're, let's say you run the biggest sports agency in the country or, or maybe, um, you know, are associated with players in some way.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Let me slow you down right there because if I do anything relative to the CBA, I'll get fined again. And while I like you, it's not strategic right now.

• 32:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Basically you like me fine, but not as much as Dr. J is what you're saying.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 32:26Stephen J. Dubner?

  I can, I can accept that.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Appreciate that.

• 32:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  Coming up after the break, Mark Cuban is famous for yelling at NBA referees. We'll get to the roots of this habit.

• 32:37Speaker 01

  When I started doing my homework, you know, games weren't officiated the same in the first minute as they were in the last minute, and that just drove me nuts.

• 32:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  And why was Cuban, according to Cuban, not allowed to buy a Major League Baseball team?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Because they knew I'd try to change things. I would teach all our guys to bat flip every time they hit a homerun because you gotta just change things up.

• 32:59Stephen J. Dubner?

  And if you haven't heard it yet, check out our entire Hidden Side of Sports series on any podcast app or on Freakonomics.com. We will be right back.

• 33:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Freakonomics Radio is sponsored by Angie. Angie has been connecting homeowners with skilled pros for over 30 years, and they've made it easier than ever to tackle home projects. Their nationwide network has experts in everything from plumbing and landscaping to roofing, remodels, and more. You can read verified reviews and request and compare quotes to find your best price. So join the millions of homeowners who use Angie to get the job done well. Download the Angie app today or visit A-N-G-I dot com.

• 33:49Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 34:21Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 34:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let's get back to the lightly edited full interview we did with Mark Cuban for our Hidden Side of Sports series. Cuban is, among many other things, the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks.

• 35:09Stephen J. Dubner?

  Let me ask you this. Big development from the Supreme Court not so long ago about sports gambling. I would assume that really changes the valuation of every professional or even semi-professional sports franchise?

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Without question.

• 35:22Stephen J. Dubner?

  Can you talk about how that's going to affect you?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it'll lead to our franchise valuations doubling, literally, because there's a lot more reasons for people to pay attention, a lot more reasons for people to watch. And that's good for our bottom line. People will attend more and watch more hours of NBA basketball. And same for all professional sports.

• 35:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, I got a quiz for you, or a riddle. I know you're a very smart guy. I won't be surprised if you get this right. Home field advantage exists in every sport all over the world. What would you say is the primary driver of home field advantage? As according to academics who've studied this, let me say it.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  You know, my guess would, and it's not home court, home ice advantage, doesn't necessarily hold true. Like in hockey, it doesn't hold true. So I would tell you probably the energy. And so there's a couple of things. One, you know, I know there's studies that say that the officials give benefit to home teams across all sports. You know, people try to argue that that's not the case. It is whatever it is, it is. And then there's the energy of a crowd. I mean, crowds do make players play harder. And then, you know, I'd also say there's just the comfort of playing in a place that you're used to shooting and playing in, hitting in, fielding, and et cetera.

• 36:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  So what the academics argue is that it's basically unconscious ref bias, that they're not rooting for the home team, obviously, but basically the crowd sentiment puts the refs unconsciously in that mode.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  I think Justin Wolfers wrote that.

• 36:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Justin wrote about race, actually. You know, most of the studies about home field advantage come from soccer, where there are some nice Little instrumental variables that you can use to determine.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  And plus, yeah, depending on the level of soccer, you know, where you're playing. It, yeah, there's concern for their lives.

• 37:10Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, like one of the best piece of evidence came from measuring soccer played in stadiums where there was a running track around the field. So the refs are literally, you know, 20 yards further from the crowd and, and there the home field advantage is much less so. But that said, you are probably most famous as an owner for, I don't know if you want to call it working the refs, but communicating with the refs.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:34Stephen J. Dubner?

  Just talk about that, how it evolved and how successful you think it is.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  It's funny, you know, everybody's wired differently. And when I play basketball, and by the way, I just got done playing basketball and I've got a diet, I just had a diet coke up against my Achilles because, so I've been a basketball junkie my entire life. Everybody's got something. And for whatever reason, when I got to the Mavs, I just looked at the officiating and it just drove me nuts because, you know, my attitude has always been that the three officials in basketball, no matter what the level, have more impact than 80% of the players on the court. And that, that's why it's always driven me crazy. And when I first got in and started doing my homework, you know, one of the things that was, you know, conventional wisdom is

• 38:24Speaker 01

  that games weren't officiated the same in the first minute as they were in the last minute. And that just drove me nuts. And as, you know, the more I got to know, the more I got to learn, then I started to understand, you know, how officials at all levels manage games and deal with certain issues. And it wasn't always about making the right call throughout the game. And, and so that's, that's just ticked me off. And that just led to everything else. And so was it worth it? Yeah, I think it has been because I can tell you that things have changed dramatically. At various times, it changed dramatically for the better. At various times, personnel changed and it got worse. So, you know, we'll see what happens this season.

• 39:03Stephen J. Dubner?

  Do you think that your input on that has changed the way NBA games are refereed now? At least more consistency?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Without question. I don't know if there's more consistency, but yeah.

• 39:13Stephen J. Dubner?

  What are the channels by which it's worked? Is, have there been actual committees where you sit down and say, listen, this is plainly going on and it's, you know, not right, not fair, not transparent?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, what basically, no effect, no, no, it's not even like that. It's not like I come in and say, you know, this ref is biased, or this guy's got a problem. Couple of times I've done that, um, but, you know, and it's been investigated and it's been fixed. And it's not like Tim Donahue, it's just little marginal things. But in any event, but what has changed in my, the thing that I've always harped on the most is from all my experience in business, you know, you always want to get the best possible manager. And where I've seen a lot of companies make mistakes is they'll take their best salesperson and make them a sales manager. Well, just because you're a good salesperson doesn't make you a good sales manager. And so using that analogy, just because you were a good referee, or just because you were

• 40:05Speaker 01

  good in management somewhere in the NBA, doesn't mean you're the best person to be in charge of the officiating group. And that's been my biggest battle, that they promote people not because they were the best for the job, but because they were there. Or they promoted refs into positions of authority, not because they were great managers, and not because they could get great results, but because they used to be good refs. And those guys wanted to keep on working. And so that's where I had the greatest amount of problem, and that's where I think I've had the greatest impact.

• 40:35Stephen J. Dubner?

  Gotcha. Um, there's another piece of research that argues that a lot of NBA coaches are bad strategically when it comes to sitting players in foul trouble.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  That if a player is good enough to sit, because you're worried about losing him, then his value is actually greater by playing. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that, and if you ever talked to your coaches about that?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  No, I agree. Look, you know, because going back to the refs, even the refs know how many fouls a guy has, a guy has, and so they understand that, you know, if it's a toss-up call and it's a gray area call, they're probably not going to call it. And players are smart enough to adjust. Now, on the flip side, when you know a great player has three fouls in the first quarter, you're going to go at them and try to get that fourth foul, um, because there is a point of diminishing returns. And so typically, if it's two fouls, I'm fine if Rick keeps him in, and Rick's gotten to that point. Um, if it's, again, a qualified, depending on the opponent, right? Because the value of that player is relative to the time, the score, and the opponent. And so if the numbers say, keep him in, I'm fine with keeping him in.

• 41:38Stephen J. Dubner?

  When are you finally going to buy a Major League Baseball team?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Never.

• 41:42Stephen J. Dubner?

  What happened?

• 41:43Speaker 01

  Never.

• 41:44Stephen J. Dubner?

  What happened?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Well, two things happened. One, they didn't want me in. And two, I had, my kids got older and they're too much fun. You know, 162 games, my wife would divorce me.

• 41:53Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh. Uh, why didn't, why didn't baseball want you in?

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Because they knew I'd, I'd try to change things. You know, I just did an interview with C.C. Sebastian and he was like, well, what would you do differently? You know, one, I would teach all our guys to bat flip every time they hit a home run. Because you gotta just change things up. These unwritten rules are ridiculous and, you know, the, the fans pay the bills. You gotta give them a reason to come. Two, I, you know, I pushed for the designated hitter in both leagues so that pitchers in between innings could go right to the bullpen and warm up or do whatever they needed to. And that way, when you come back on the field, you don't, you know, you don't throw any warmup pitches. You go right into pitching and there's no, you know, throwing the ball around the infield and the outfield. You just go right in. The breaks aren't the breaks and you go right up to bat and, you know, you reduce an hour off the game.

• 42:41Stephen J. Dubner?

  It is pretty weird. It'd be like in the NBA, between every dead ball, there's like layup practice again.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. You get to get shots up and everything to get your rhythm. You know, and so there's so many ways you can speed up the game and I would have been pushing for them and talking about them and they didn't want to see that.

• 42:55Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah. What would you say have been your most significant changes to the way basketball's played since you've on the team?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Oh, little things. Um, things like the clear path rule. I changed it because I showed them the math was wrong, that it used to be one shot in the ball. I changed it to two shots in the ball. You know, different replay things. Um, now with the, the latest collective bargaining agreement, there's, um, a thing called the cap room exception. So when a team has, it used to be when a team, when a team had cap room, you just had your cap room. Now there's a 4.4 million dollar exception that I pushed to get through in our, our collective bargaining agreement, um, in 2011. And so that's been a big change. Um, and I'm sure there's other things. That's just what comes to the top of my head.

• 43:39Stephen J. Dubner?

  The effect of that exception is what then?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  So if the Mavericks have 25 million dollars in cap room this year and we use that cap room to sign three players and fully use it, we still have one exception where we can sign one or more players for up to 4.4 million dollars.

• 43:54Stephen J. Dubner?

  I see.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And the logic was you want to incent teams to have cap room and to try to improve their teams. And one way to improve the incentive was to create this cap room exception.

• 44:05Stephen J. Dubner?

  Right. All right. Last question. Where's LeBron going?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  I don't know, and I can't comment on other teams' players.

• 44:12Stephen J. Dubner?

  Dallas is not a team I've heard mentioned at all. Should they be?

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Who knows? Who knows? Like I said, you're, I'm not ready to get fined again.

• 44:24Stephen J. Dubner?

  Basically, I'm no Dr. J. I've learned my lesson. I stand down, but uh,

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I would never say that.

• 44:30Stephen J. Dubner?

  That said, I very much enjoyed it, and I really appreciate your time, and I wish you the best of luck this season.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Appreciate that.

• 44:36Stephen J. Dubner?

  Hey, um, you gonna run for some office at some point?

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm gonna run to the bathroom right now, so I don't know. We'll see what happens in the midterms.

• 44:45Stephen J. Dubner?

  Uh huh. But would you enjoy, do you think, the presidency? Would that be a job that, I mean, just in the, in the abstract, is it a job that you think?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Could I do the job? Yeah. Would I enjoy it? That's hard to say. Um, the challenge isn't, you know, could I, you know, doing the job, it's, it's the process to get there. You know, the definition of, of poor parenting is having kids eight, 11, and 14, and running for the presidency.

• 45:07Stephen J. Dubner?

  Yeah, but just think how cute they'd be on the posters. I mean, that's a real, I mean, if you want to just talk pure strategic exploitation of your family.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  No, I'm not a pimp. You know, when it comes to my kids, no. I'd be the exact opposite.

• 45:20Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right. Well, whatever you do, I wish you continued huge success, and I thank you very much for the time.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 45:25Stephen J. Dubner?

  All right, Mark, be well.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Thanks. I enjoyed the interview. Thank you.

• 45:28Stephen J. Dubner?

  Thanks to Mark Cuban for this conversation. You can hear him and many others in our Hidden Side of Sports series. Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This series was produced by Anders Kelto and Derek John with help from Alvin Melathe and Harry Huggins. Our staff also includes Alison Kreglo, Greg Rippon, and Zach Lipinski. We had help this week from Matt Straub. The music you hear throughout our episodes was composed by Luis Guerra. Our show can also be heard on NPR stations across the country. Thanks for listening.

• 46:03Speaker 02

  Stitcher.

• 46:08Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 46:41Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 47:25Stephen J. Dubner?

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• 47:42Speaker 02

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