If there’s anything Mark Cuban is good at, it’s knowing when to get out of businesses at the right time. Two decades after he sold his website for billions just months before the dot-com crash, he’s switching things up again. Cuban said on a podcast last week that he will leave Shark Tank next year after 16 seasons as a panelist on the business-pitching show. And on Tuesday, the Athletic reported that Cuban is planning on selling his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks to the widow of Sheldon Adelson (with the unusual caveat that he will retain control over basketball operations).
The question is “Why?” Cuban loves being in the public eye, and frequently weighs in on politics, business, and just about everything else. So naturally, his big moves have stirred up speculation. Below are three theories about potential next steps for the 440th-richest man in the world.
Is he running for office?
Cuban, who is no fan of either political party, has long been considered a possible candidate for higher office. In 2016, he said he would entertain vice-presidential offers from either candidate. (He ended up campaigning for Hillary Clinton and warning of the dangers of a Trump presidency.) The next year, Cuban even put forward some target policies if he were to ever run — like income inequality and health care, which he described as a “right.”
But if there’s a political career in Cuban’s future, it won’t be for a while. Amid all the speculation over his career change-up, he explicitly ruled out a third-party run for president in 2024. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about it. “If I can come up with solutions I think people can get behind and truly solve problems, then it makes perfect sense for me to run,” Cuban said in 2017.
The idea of a Cuban presidency has lingered on in some capacity. One polling company even conducted a statewide survey between Trump and Cuban ahead of the 2020 race, with Texans favoring the Mavs owner by three points.
If he skips 2024, there’s always the midterms. Cuban, who lives in a mansion in Dallas, has spent more than enough time in Texas to become a celebrity in the state — even if some high-school football games in the DFW draw more spectators than the Mavericks. And if he wraps up his commitment to Shark Tank in 2025, that would leave him with plenty of time to run for something.
Is it time for a Mark Cuban drug revolution?
Since January 2022, Cuban has humbly helped run a firm not-so-humbly named the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. The premise is simple: In a country where pharmaceutical companies inflate the cost of prescription drugs, Cost Plus Drug offers them for a lower price, what they describe as the number “you’ll pay for us to keep our business running” plus the cost of the prescription and shipping. For some generics, the price is basically the same as ordering on Amazon. But for some prescription drugs, including treatments for leukemia and hepatitis B, the cost goes down from retail prices in the hundreds or thousands of dollars to $14 to $18.
With Americans of all political backgrounds thoroughly frustrated with just about every facet of the health-care industry, this could be an opportunity for Cuban to focus on health at the population level, instead of just, say, the wellbeing of Kyrie Irving’s ankles. Consider these pitches coming to a post-Cuban episode of Shark Tank: the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Urgent-Care Facility. The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Methadone Clinic. The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Nursing Home.
Or something more wholesome?
Maybe Cuban doesn’t want to realize the functional-yet-dystopian idea of neo-feudal health care as envisioned above.
For the most part, Cuban just wants to spend more time with his family. “I just want to have a couple summers with my teens before they go off on their own,” Cuban told The Hollywood Reporter of his decision to leave Shark Tank. “Nothing to do with the show. I love it. I love being on it. I love what [it] represents and how it motivates entrepreneurs around the world.”
