Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let me introduce you to Mark Cuban, the US billionaire
businessman has his hands in all sorts of pies, tech, media, health, insurance,
the NBA, and more recently politics.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
He got his first major start with the media company
broadcast dot Com that he sold to Yahoo for five
point seven billion US dollars worth of stock in nineteen
ninety nine. The next year, he'd get into the NBA,
bought the Dallas Mavericks for two hundred and eighty mil
usd sold a majority stake of the team late twenty
twenty three for three point five billion. And he's been
one of the faces of Sharks a Shark Tank for
more than a decade, and when the Dems were struggling
(00:32):
for identity after the Trump domination, he was touted as
a potential front runner for them, but he's ruled out
a run for twenty twenty eight. Now Mark Cubans with us. Mark,
It's great to have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Yeah, my pleasure, Heather, But I got to show you
what I'm wearing. Got to represent.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Lovely all blacks Jersey. Where'd you get your hands on that?
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I forgot where I got I've been a rugby player
fan since I've been eighteen years old, So I've got
a little collection of jerseys from all over the place.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Mike, Yeah, look you are you are actually something of that,
not just an ordinary fan. You' something of an authority
on sports. So give me you'll take on rugby because
we have been discussing this on the show this week.
Is rugby boring?
Speaker 2 (01:09):
No? Fifteenths? No? No, are you kidding me? I love
after basketball, It's my second favorite sport. I love fifteens.
Stevens can be a little bit boring, right because it's
a bunch of little guys just running around all the time.
Like rugby. To me, you gotta have impact, you gotta
have scrums. You got it? Like, yeah, I mean seven
(01:30):
I'm not as big a fan of seven's because I
was never fit enough to be good at it. But yeah,
I love fifteens.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, I see. I find that fascinating because the debate
that we're having at the moments in New Zealand, and
I suppose in a lot of rugby countries, is actually
that rugby league is this wonderful and fast spectacle, whether
whereas rugby is so slow down by the rules and
yet thumbs down from you.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah, Union all the way. Like, what do they like
about league that they think is better?
Speaker 1 (01:56):
It's faster, whereas you know, it's a much more free
flowing game, whereas rugby is really defensive, right, it's not
in the taking game. So you get the ball and
you go into a scrumming and you get down onto
the ground.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
No, I can see that. I can see that. But
I guess the League reminds me too much of football
where you stop and then go and then you know
the American football.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, then I need to borrow your brain for this,
because you famously turned around the Dallas Mavericks when you
bought it. Right, So rugby is in a really difficult,
precarious position where it's just not making money. What would
you do to save it?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
It's hard, right, I mean in the US it's it's
a mess. But you know, I don't know, honestly, I
don't know the economics of rugby in New Zealand or
Australia where some of the bigger, the bigger rugby countries.
But it's you've got to make it more fun, not
so much on the on the pitch, right, but in
(02:47):
the in the stands. Because most people like It was
the same way with basketball. When I got to the MAVs,
the people that were at the NBA thought it was
all about basketball, squeaking sneakers, you know, who had the
purest jump shot. But I was like, you don't even
remember the score of the last game you went to.
You know, you remember who you were with, you remember
your buddy that got drunk, you remember the first day.
(03:10):
And I think rugby is fun, but it's not as
much a spectacle when you go to go to a match, right,
you know, it's outdoors and it's just a just a
different environment now, you know, like soccer football. You know
you get the singing and the fandom and all that.
(03:31):
But you know, but that's the way it is all
the time. It's pretty much the same all the time
in my experiences, right, You've got to make it different
otherwise you just get the purists that have been going
for fifty years that don't want to see it changed.
And that's what happened to basketball, where nobody wanted to change.
The same thing happened with American baseball, which is boring
(03:52):
as shit, right, but they sped it up and it
made it so it's more of a party in going
to the game, so it was quick. You know, there's
nothing wrong with changing the rules in rugby two right
to make it quicker, to turn things around. You know,
you know they went through where you can lift, like
when I played the way back when you couldn't lift
(04:12):
somebody in the line out. They make changes, right they
you know, substitutions you couldn't substitute. You know, we've changed
the game before. You need to change it to make
it quicker, but you also need to make the environment
where fans are going not repetitive all the time. I mean,
we Americans look at soccer and rugby overseas and say
(04:32):
wow that you know, the commitment to the team is incredible,
But as an entrepreneur I look at it and say,
it's the shame shit every game. Yes, you know, maybe
somebody gets a little drunker and changes the words to
a song, or maybe a bunch of crazies come up
with something a little bit different, but that's not organized
from from the host squad.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
So Mike, you, I mean, you've just basically hit all
the complaints right You've nailed all of the problems right there.
I mean, you've literally explained how to fix it's like
you're in my head. So when you've with whatever it
is that you're doing at the moment in America, can
you just come over here and run rugby if you
don't mind.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I wish I could figure out American rugby because I
love the sport. But it's tough. Mark.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Tell me the thing. The latest thing I see popping
up from you is that you guys are trying to
get Trump to cut Yeah, bit of a bit of
a break on the drug fees. How's it going with that?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It's going great. I mean, you know, it's not like
you know, New Zealand and most other countries we like
in the United States, when you go to go to
a doctor and you get a prescription for a drug,
the only question they really asked you is what pharmacy
do you use? You have no idea what it costs,
and you know, you have no idea what you're going
to pay. And so we changed. We created this company
(05:40):
called costplus Drugs dot Com so that when you go
to this website, you know exactly what you're going to
pay for your medications. And just doing that was a
game changer for the entire country. So that's been going great.
We were up into the right, you know, and so people,
we keep on growing every single.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Day, and so how are you finding I mean, you
basically need Donald Trump to cut the fees, right, manufacturing fees.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, that's for some Yeah, for us to grow bigger.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, Okay, I mean let's say that he did it.
Let's say that you actually managed to start manufacturing when
these drugs come off paytent? Is that actually a viable
thing to do in the States? Like, can you really
fulfill this?
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh? Do you think I would start a business that
wouldn't be viable? No?
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, but I do think that Donald Trump would come
up with an idea like that would totally be betshit.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Yeah, well that's a whole nother conversation, right, But yeah,
we're we've got new We've got ways that we can
make drugs using AI and robotics that have cut the
costs dramatically, and so we can get there and save
a lot of a lot of people a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
But it takes a little help because of all the
fees they charge.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Listen, Mike, give me you will take on Donald Trump.
What's he up to? Is he just there to make money?
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Maybe? Yeah, I would argue with that. I've known it
for twenty five years and he's always been this way, right.
You know, he's a business guy that just wants to
make as much money as he can and that just
never changed when he got an office. You know, there's
some things that are good and somethings that are bad,
like anybody, but that's him. It's all about the dollars. Now.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
I see you flut it a little bit with getting
into politics. Why did you decide not to do it?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Because I'm not an idiot and I'm not an asshole,
and you know, I just think as an entrepreneur, I
can do more by starting companies that have an impact,
like costplus drugs. You know, I truly think I could
change American health care and that's a better mission for me.
I'm just not the political type. I just don't have
(07:34):
the patience, you know. And plus like I'd rather sing
rugby songs after a match and you stupid shit and
you know, and not have you can't do that and
be a politician.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
So You've had a little bit to do with both
the Republicans and the Democrats, and I mean you even
toyed with being an independent for a bit. The impression
that I got from you is that you just found
them all really profoundly disappointing on both sides.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Is that fair? Oh? Yeah, for sure. I mean, if
we're up to me, i'd get rid of both parties
and states. I'm an independent. I think for myself, it
really depends on each individual issue. I'm not gonna, you know, prejudge.
I'm not going to say, well, I'm a Republican. I
got to think this way or that way. I just
you know, I'm an entrepreneur. I just look at things.
That's you know, can we solve this problem or can
(08:17):
we not?
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Okay, so we keep business head on, and I suppose
just your life head on as well. AI obviously a
game change. But how much of a game changer do
you think?
Speaker 2 (08:25):
More than you think? Yeah, more so than you think.
From a business perspective, whether you're in New Zealand or
the States, there's gonna be two types of companies, those
who are great at AI and those who went out
of business because they don't do shit with AI. That's
how big an impact it's going to be. And for kids,
it's a great democratizer for education, and really not just
(08:47):
for kids, for everybody, like three years ago before it
started becoming popular, Like you would go to Google and
your search engine and you put something in and you'd
see fifteen links and you'd have to figure out which
ones are you know, which ones are bullshit and go
through that. Right with AI, it kind of goes through
them all for you and saves you all that time,
(09:08):
which is like having access to, you know, all the
world's greatest libraries, every professor, every expert. And that doesn't
mean it's going to be right every time, because even
the experts are wrong. But it allows you because there's
more than one. You can go into chat, GPT, you
can go into Perplexity, you can go into Claude, you
can go into groc, you can go into Gemini and
(09:29):
get feedback from each one of them, which is like
getting feedback from a bunch of experts, and then make
your own decisions, you know. I think if it's if
for any kid, adult, whoever that's curious, it's like incredible.
I love it, right, I use it, you know, And
in business it's like so it's like you can ask
it questions. It's weird sometimes because I ask a question
(09:51):
that I normally won't ask anybody, But like, I'm like, shit,
why not ask it? And it comes back with good
answers like I had. I was talking to all these
politic titians in the US, right, and it was the
Governor's meeting of all the fifty states, and they changed
what they wanted to talk to me about it last
minute while I was in the green room where they said, okay,
we also want you to talk about AI for school kids. Right,
(10:14):
I'm like, I didn't know shit about AI for school kids.
So I go into chat. Shept, give me your ten
best ideas of using artificial intelligence for kids from you know,
five years old to eighteen years old. And they gave
me these phenomenal ideas, just phenomenal, and I went and
I just spit them out and everybody thought I was smart.
You know, it was great, even though I didn't know
(10:35):
what the hell I was talking about ten minutes before.
You know, you can get information. Now. It doesn't mean
it's perfect. It's going to hallucinate and make mistakes, but
you have that ability to ask the same question of
more than one to compare the output. So I'm a
huge fan of AI.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh brilliant, Listen, Mike, I'm just clean out of time now,
but it's been such a bloody delight to talk to
you and you filled my cup with optimism for the world.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So thank you, thank you. I really appreciate it. And
you know I got a root for the Eagles, but
my second favorite team the All Blacks.
Speaker 1 (11:04):
All good on you, Hey, you have yourself a lovely day,
and thank you again for your time. That is Mark Cuban.
I don't know if you caught it, fan of the
All Blacks. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen
live to news talks.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.