Mark Cuban, the billionaire businessman and Dallas Mavericks owner, said he is leaving ABC’s “Shark Tank.”
He recently announced his plans on the weekly Showtime podcast“All the Smoke,”saying season 16 of “Shark Tank” will be his last. The show is in its 15th season with “sharks” Cuban, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary.
“Next year, our 16th year, is gonna be my last year, so I got one more year to go,” Cuban told former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, the hosts of the podcast.
ABC has not confirmed the pending departure.
Cuban, who did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment, has been one of the main “sharks” since the show’s third season after appearing as a guest investor in season 2.
“We’ve trained multiple generations of entrepreneurs that if somebody can come from Iowa or Sacramento or wherever, and show up on the carpet of “Shark Tank” and show their business and get a deal, it’s going to inspire generations of kids,” Cuban said.
He often reads body language and looks for ideas that he wishes he thought of himself when deciding what to invest in, he added.
“When someone walks in ‘Shark Tank,’ you can tell if they are trying too hard,” Cuban said. “I have this rule: The longer the back story, the worse the deal.”
In July, he said he was not running for president in 2024 as No Labels pushes for a bipartisan, third-party presidential ticket on next year’s ballot.
While Cuban has had conversations with No Labels, the bipartisan group spending money to secure ballot access for a third-party presidential campaign in all 50 states, he wrote in an email to NBC News that “my family would disown me” if he ran for president.
In 2021, Cuban purchased the virtually empty 76.8-acre community of Mustang, Texas.
“Did it to help out a friend. No plans yet!” he said in an email at the time.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
