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Billionaire Mark Cuban has said he would be interested in buying Fox News and Elon Musk’s X – but he can’t afford it.
The Shark Tank reality TV star was discussing the baby boomer generation - who he calls the “Fox News generation” and how you reach them.
“You buy Fox News,” he told Wired. “If I had enough money to do it, which I don’t, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.” Cuban, who sold his majority stake in the Dallas Mavericks NBA team earlier this year, explained how he cannot afford to purchase Murdoch’s network, despite his vast wealth.
Cuban, whose net worth is $5.7 billion according to Forbes, estimated it would take between $15 billion to $20 billion to turn the network around. “You’ve got to pay at least 50 per cent premium. So now it’s $22 billion. And then you’ve got to make all the changes, so that’s another $2 billion,” he said. “You can sell some things off. So maybe it’s $15 billion, $20 billion net. I don’t have $15 or $20 billion in cash sitting around.”
The billionaire investor first coined the “Fox News generation” term in a previous interview with the New York Times, where he lamented how his generation had gone from “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” to becoming people who “condemn Black Lives matters and watch Fox News in droves”. He said: “It’s so upsetting to me. You have no idea."
Cuban added how, in a perfect world, he would also consider buying X - but he knows Musk has “no reason” to sell it.
The billionaires, who often row, clashed earlier this year after Cuban suggested the algorithms on X are adapted to suit Musk’s right-leaning politics since he acquired the social media platform in 2022. It prompted Musk to call him out, responding that X’s algorithm is “open source”.
“If you interact and argue with ‘right wing’ accounts, which Cuban does a lot, the algorithm will assume that’s what you *want* to do and give you more of it lmao,” Musk retorted.
Cuban revisited the spat in the latest Wired interview. “He who controls the algorithm controls the platform - controls that world, that community,” he reiterated. “And Elon has built, X has built, a very strong right-leaning community.”
The pair also sparred over diversity and inclusion initiatives in the workplace earlier this year. The Tesla CEO is vocal about his anti-DEI stance, declaring on X: “DEI must die”.
“You can’t hire less qualified people, because that’s business suicide,” Cuban added. “But you can go out and find the really, really smart people who aren’t being discovered. That’s the mission: to look where other people are not.”
Cuban previously announced the upcoming season of Shark Tank on ABC would be his last after 16 series.
