From Basketball to Billions: The Unbelievable Rise and Collapse of Broadcast.com

Broadcast.com, originally known as AudioNet, was a revolutionary tech startup born from a simple frustration—Mark Cuban’s inability to listen to his beloved Indiana Hoosiers basketball games from afar. In the mid-1990s, when internet speeds were painfully slow and streaming media was science fiction, Cuban and Todd Wagner pioneered the idea of broadcasting live audio and video over the web. What began as a way for sports fans to follow their teams grew into one of the earliest examples of online content delivery, laying the foundation for modern platforms like YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix. Starting in a modest office with little more than determination and dial-up connections, they convinced radio stations to license their broadcasts, built proprietary technology, and expanded beyond sports into music, news, and corporate events. Their company, renamed Broadcast.com, became a symbol of the dot-com boom. In 1998, its IPO skyrocketed from $18 to $62 per share on the first day, making it one of the most successful tech debuts of its time. Just months later, in April 1999, Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com in a staggering $5.7 billion stock deal—one of the largest internet acquisitions ever at that point. But the timing couldn’t have been worse. Less than a year after the acquisition, the dot-com bubble burst, dragging down Yahoo!’s stock value and rendering the once-lucrative deal nearly worthless. Inside Yahoo!, integration issues, shifting priorities, and rapidly evolving broadband technology rendered Broadcast.com's infrastructure obsolete. While the company faded into obscurity, its founders thrived—Cuban cashed out almost all of his Yahoo! stock immediately, securing billions in real value before the crash, which catapulted him into new ventures including buying the Dallas Mavericks and becoming a household name on Shark Tank. Meanwhile, Todd Wagner continued to innovate through entertainment and philanthropy. Despite its eventual disappearance, Broadcast.com left an indelible mark on the digital world. It proved that streaming media could work, even if imperfectly, and inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. Its legacy lives on every time someone clicks play on a podcast, binge-watches a series, or streams a live event. More than just a tech story, Broadcast.com is a tale of ambition, foresight, and the volatile nature of innovation during one of history’s most chaotic financial periods—a cautionary yet inspiring chapter in the evolution of the internet.