Mark Cuban: belief

Transcript context

…The players. Yeah, for sure. On the business side, the first question I asked myself is what business are we in? I really didn’t know the answer immediately, but within the first few months, it was obvious that the entire NBA thought we were in the business of basketball. We were not, we were in the experience business. When you think about sporting events that you’ve been to, you don’t remember the score, you don’t remember the home runs or the dunks, you remember who you were with, and you remember why you went. It was my first date with a girl who’s now my wife or I went with my buddies and he threw up on the person in front of us. My dad took me, my aunt, my uncle took me. Those are the experiences you remember. Once I conveyed to our people that this is what we were selling, that what happened in the arena off the court was just as important as what happened on the court, if not more so because if mom or dad are bringing the 10-year-old, you have to keep them occupied because they have short attention spans. I would get into fights with NBA, put aside the refs, but getting in fights in the NBA, I would say NBA, nothing but attorneys, because they had no marketing skills whatsoever. To their credit, they realized that was a problem and started bringing in better and better marketing people. Part of the selling is you’re selling the team, selling the sport, selling the people, the idea, all of it.…

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