Mark Cuban Predicts 'Greedy' NFL Will Implode In 10 Years
The blunt and always direct Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban made an astounding prediction about the future of the NFL in a Sunday night pregame interview before his team faced off against the Brooklyn Nets.
Cuban said the football league, which has been around since 1920 and a staple of American sports, would eventually implode in a decade because he believes it is becoming too greedy, according to ESPN.
"I think the NFL is 10 years away from an implosion," Cuban said as the conversation steered away from NBA and any basketball related operations. "I'm just telling you: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. And they're getting hoggy."
Cuban, who knows a thing or two about business being a successful businessman and investor himself, said greed is always the underlying cause of ruining a good business.
"When you try to take it too far, people turn the other way," he said. "I'm just telling you, when you've got a good thing and you get greedy, it always, always, always, always, always turns on you. That's rule No. 1 of business."
The Shark Tank star and billionaire, whose current net worth is $2.57 billion, according to Forbes, was speaking candidly about the NFL's expansion of its television package and game days.
According to ESPN, NFL games consistently dominate television ratings but Cuban argued that it was a poor business decision to include Thursday night games into the league's line up of game days.
"They're tying to take over every night of TV," Cuban said. "Initially, it'll be, 'Yeah, they're the biggest-rating thing that there is.' OK, Thursday, that's great, regardless of whether it impacts (the NBA) during that period when we cross over. Then if it gets Saturday, now you're impacting colleges. Now it's on four days a week."
The NFL announced a one-year contract with CBS and the league's own cable network last month to televise Thursday games. During the first eight weeks of the season, CBS will broadcast the games while simulcasting with the NFL Network.
The NFL Network will exclusively air six Thursday night games later in the season and will retain CBS' announcing team Jim Nantz and Phil Simms. Additionally, the league decided to have a Saturday doubleheader in Week 16.
"It's all football," he said. "At some point, the people get sick of it,"
Cuban continued his rant by claiming that the NFL is valuing TV money more than its fans who were used to watching their teams play on Sundays and the occasional Monday night. He also compared the NFL's expansion to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as it lost viewers once it expanded to air five day a week.
"They put it on every night," Cuban said. "Not 100 percent analogous, but they handled it the same. I'm just telling you, pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered."