'Shark Tank' star Mark Cuban turned 300 of his employees into millionaires with a single move
Mark Cuban gained celebrity status after appearing on "Shark Tank" for 16 years, but he was also known for his investment in sports. After quitting "Shark Tank" the billionaire sold much of his stake in the Dallas Mavericks and has been going around sharing his wisdom on podcasts and interviews. In a recent episode of the “Club Shay Shay” podcast, Cuban revealed how much he values the people who work for him and shared how he gave out $35 million in bonuses after selling his part of the Mavericks.
Cuban made waves across the sporting domain when he bought the Dallas Mavericks back in 2000 for $285 million. Over the years, the Shark Tank star worked relentlessly on the team to boost its value. By the time Cuban decided to sell his majority stake, the team's value had soared to approximately $3.5 billion, according to Forbes. All the speculation about the team's value was put to an end after Miriam Adelson bought and acquired the majority stake. However, Cuban wasn't the only one behind the team's success and he acknowledged the hard work of the workers behind the Mavericks by announcing bonuses worth $35 million, after the sale. “It ended up being a lot more actually, but I’m not there without them,” he told ESPN analyst Shannon Sharpe on the “Club Shay Shay” podcast.
Cuban further shared that it was out of habit as he had done the same for the employees at other firms of his. “I did it with MicroSolutions, you know, we had 80 employees, they all got paid," he said. Cuban had started the practice of giving back after selling his first company, MicroSolutions, for $6 million to CompuServe in 1990. Talking to CNBC Make It he stated that he took 20% of the total sale price, and paid it out to the 80 employees. This amounted to $15,000 per staffer if distributed equally. Cuban had done something similar after selling his majority stakes in HDNet (now known as AXS TV), in 2019.
In every business I've sold I've paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year. https://t.co/02NdL9a41q, 300 out of 330 employees became millionaires. Microsolutions, I paid out 20 pct to our 80 employees. HDNet wasn't as big , but paid out about 20pct… https://t.co/hTvCZnVvUF
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) June 5, 2024
"I did it with Broadcast.com — out of 330 employees, 300 became millionaires. And I wanted to do the same thing with the Mavs," Cuban added in the podcast. Cuban wasted no time in announcing the bonuses in late 2023. Back in January 2024, CNN Sport reported that Cuban had informed the employees of the bonus through an internal memo. “As a thank you for all your hard work making the Mavs an amazing organization, each of you will be receiving a bonus from myself, and the Adelson and Dumont families. In total, we will be paying out approximately $35 plus Million Dollars in bonuses to you all,” the memo read as per the report.
Cuban added in the memo that to calculate the bonuses, the leadership team used a framework that took the time for which an employee had worked for the team, into consideration. The details of the memo were confirmed by Mavericks spokesperson Alan Rakowski to CNN.
"You know, they were there for me the whole time … for those who were there 20 years or more it was life-changing money," Cuban told Sharpe, reflecting on the payout.
