Mark Cuban said crowding back into sports stadiums and arenas won’t happen until the “science” is in place to make people feel safe from the coronavirus, and that federal small business relief has been engineered in the wrong way.
“I think initially we’ll play just for the TV cameras, with essential personnel and players,” Cuban, the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“That’s a great thing, because I think we need things to cheer for. We need things to get excited about,” he said. As the league restarts, “we won’t do anything to jeopardize the safety of our players or employees.”
The billionaire said he wishes President Donald Trump was right about the U.S. economy launching into a rapid, V-shaped rebound after the Covid-19 pandemic fades, but isn’t optimistic.
“I don’t see a V-shaped recovery,” Cuban said, joining a chorus of skeptics including Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank President Neel Kashkari and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer.
Trump said on April 7 that, “we’re going to go like a rocket ship once we get back to business. There’s a lot of pent-up energy and demand.”
That optimism was undiminished on Saturday, when Trump again predicted a “rocket ship” rebound. “We’re going to have just a tremendous surge,” the president said on Fox News’s “Justice With Judge Jeanine.”
Shark’s Perspective
“I wish he was right, but he’s not,” Cuban said on Fox. “There’s going to be a lot of trepidation, and that concern is going to lead to people holding back.”
Cuban has invested in dozens of small businesses across the U.S. through his work on the ABC entrepreneur pitch show “Shark Tank” since 2009. Those include companies making everything from cupcakes to bed-bug detection systems.
He questioned the value of the $349 billion small business relief effort the Trump administration launched to help mom-and-pop firms stay afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, and suggested a form of overdraft protection instead.
“You would work with the banks to designate, here’s my rent, here’s my landlord that I write checks to, here’s my utilities that I write checks to, here’s what I do for payroll,” Cuban said. “And for those checks, they won’t bounce.”
Regarding large corporations, including airlines, which are in line for millions or billions of dollars in federal help, Cuban called for a hard line, and strings attached.
“This is taxpayer money. So I’m not saying don’t give them money, but there needs to be terms and conditions that really put the taxpayer first,” he said. “Let’s ask for equity. Let’s ask for equity kickers.”
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
