Before Splurging $285 Million on Mavericks, Mark Cuban Spent $40 Million to Buy First Private Jet

Mark Cuban’s rise to riches is the stuff of movies. He didn’t come from a family that was loaded with money. He worked extremely hard and earned the opportunity to buy an NBA team. However, the Dallas Mavericks franchise wasn’t his first multimillion-dollar purchase.

Traditional cable television is no longer the primary source of entertainment, as streaming services have taken over media. Many people are unaware that Mark Cuban was part of the world’s very first streaming company—Broadcast.com.

When this innovation was still in its infancy, Cuban and his colleague, Todd Wagner, knew they had something special on their hands. In 1999, they entered negotiations to sell the company to Yahoo! and completed the transaction for $5.7 billion.

The sale made Cuban a billionaire. The first thing he spent his money on was the luxury of traveling in comfort.

“I told you I value time. The first thing I bought? Gulfstream G5,” Cuban said.

The most valuable asset in Cuban’s life is time, so to stop wasting that commodity by flying commercial, he scoured the internet for a private jet. One test flight was all he needed to know the plane had to be his. He purchased the plane for $40 million, making it the highest online purchase in the history of the internet.

His next purchase would be the most iconic investment of his life. The notorious businessman threw down $285 million to buy the Dallas Mavericks and went on to become one of the greatest owners in NBA history.

Following the Mavericks purchase, Cuban bought a house without seeing it in person. But he had excess money to splurge and paid $12.5 million on the Dallas home he still lives in today.

Cuban made a historic deal selling the Mavericks

To the dismay of Mavericks fans, Mark Cuban sold the team in 2023 so he could spend more time with his family, and he made a tidy profit on the transaction.

Cuban sold the franchise to the Adelson family for a whopping $3.5 billion, getting an incredible $2.7 billion return on his initial investment.

The Adelson family have made billions from numerous international resorts. Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law Patrick Dumont are the main figures involved in basketball operations. Unlike Cuban, they don’t have any prior experience with the NBA or basketball.