He may have had operating losses in many years, but, did he make a profit when he sold the team? If so, how much? Certainly the franchise value went up quite a bit during the years he owned the team.
Good question, so I asked the MS Copilot:
“Mark Cuban purchased the Dallas Mavericks in January 2000 for $285 million. He sold a majority stake in the team to the Adelson and Dumont families in December 2023, with the sale valued at approximately $3.5 billion.”
That’s a twelve-fold increase in realized value in just under 4 years. The few hundred million he may have lost operating the team while he owned it can be considered investment maintenance expense... or even a rounding error.
That is how sports work. Very few teams, maybe the Savannah Bananas, make an operating profit. Everything is leveraged on future value of the team. I don’t think this is sustainable but what do I know.