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Mark Cuban chats up Howard Stern about $90,000 champagne, parenting and why hedidn't buy the Texas Rangers
Dallas Mavericks' owner Mark Cuban visited the Howard Stern show on Sirius radio on Wednesday, to tout a cameo he made on Necessary Roughness and talk about things that rich white guys like. Topics ranged from splurging on $90,000 bottles of champagne to stock options to pre-nuptial agreements. The entire 49-minute interview was posted on YouTube.
Other talking points included sports team ownership and reality TV, a field in which both Cuban and Stern dabble: Cuban with his Shark Tank entrepreneurial show and Stern with his role as a judge on America's Got Talent.
"My 9-year-old freaks out if she has to travel commercial," Mark Cuban said. "That scares the hell out of me."
They began with a discussion of Cuban's various residences including Dallas, Miami and the Cayman Islands. Cuban said that, although he didn't spend much time in Miami, he hung onto the property. Stern asked if each residence came with its own staff.
"We have a guy who stocks the fridge and makes sure everything's ready to go," Cuban said. "We just got a personal chef at home. My biggest fear in life is that my kids turn out to be messed up. ... My 9-year-old freaks out if she has to travel commercial. That scares the hell out of me. We do everything possible just to make it normal."
The story about Cuban buying a $90,000 bottle of champagne is true, he confirmed.
"We had just won the NBA championship," Cuban said. "It was such a unique, unique moment. We were in Miami. The night before, I had taken some customers to this club Live in Miami. They said, 'You know what we do to Cubans in Miami, we smoke 'em,' and then they started chanting, 'Let's go Heat, let's go Heat.' The next night, after we won, we're drinking champagne in the club. I wanted to walk into that club holding that $90,000 bottle of champagne and the championship trophy, just to shove it up their ass."
He recalled the moment he decided to buy the Mavericks.
"I'm at the game opening of the 1999-2000 season, and I was sitting there thinking, I could do a better job than this guy," he said. "And then I was, 'Wait a second I'm a rich motherfucker, I can buy this team.' I don't want to lose who I am or lose grasp of the traditions of my family and my background, but there's a crazy new world out there, and I'm going to get into it."
He said he wouldn't sell the team for less than a billion dollars.
"If a third party were valuing the team, they'd probably say it was worth $600 or $700 million," he said. "But the only price where I'd even consider it is a billion dollars."
He's made a number of offers for other sporting teams, including baseball, but his offer was rejected.
"I tried to buy the Pirates — I talked to the guy he said he wouldn’t sell," he said. "I tried to buy the Chicago Cubs, I made an offer for $800 million and somebody paid more. When the Texas Rangers were going through bankruptcy, I couldn't put it together in time. They were doing their best to keep me out. But I'm glad it turned out this way. Otherwise, I'd be out in the bleachers at Wrigley Field all day long and weigh 300 pounds."
