The hard-driving Shark Tank star known tongue-in-cheek as “Mr. Wonderful” is hearing from his old TV pal/adversary about his latest business venture — and while billionaire Mark Cuban‘s advice to Kevin O’Leary seems friendly, it also contains a sharp edge.
O’Leary, a rightwing conservative who has curried favor with rhetoric supporting the incoming administration, has been trying to get into the complicated deal to sell TikTok. Considering the wildly popular Chinese-owned social media app a national security threat, the U.S. government has threatened to ban it unless it sells itself.
Bytedance, which owns TikTok, is being forced to consider selling it to a U.S. company in the face of the ban — a new deadline for which is currently being considered by the Supreme Court.
In the video below, O’Leary says he has “joined with Frank McCourt to buy TikTok.” (Note: McCourt, a billionaire entrepreneur like Cuban and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, is far richer than O’Leary.) O’Leary says it is a very complex deal and that he is working with the Biden administration and that his group will need the Trump administration’s help.
[NOTE: Another potential buyer rumored to be interested is X owner Elon Musk, who has a far closer relationship to the Trump administration than anyone on O’Leary’s side of the deal.]
Kevin O’Leary on meeting with Trump: I have joined with Frank Mccourt to buy TikTok, it’s a multibillion-dollar deal… I wanted to let him know as well as others in his cabinet that we’re doing this.. we’re going to need their help pic.twitter.com/gX5UKAQ0hV
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2025
Cuban told O’Leary: “this is like a bad eps of [Shark Tank]. I know what you will do. You will tell TT or their bankers, it’s better to take the money you were able to raise from Oracle and whoever, than to end up with nothing if you get closed down. You will ask the guy who owns a bunch that is friends with the new admin to push you and stay in to reduce your outlay. He won’t.”
[Cuban seems to be referring to billionaire Trump donor and TikTok investor Jeff Yass when he says “the guy who owns a bunch.”]
Cuban continued:
“You have done the math saying that even if you lose half your users, you can sell enough ads to cover your loans, and overhead. You won’t. Ad sales ain’t like they used to be. Keeping users ain’t what it used to be. Especially when you have a start from scratch algo that one of your investors said they can build or apply for you as your Ai Partner.
“Add to that every other platform trying to take those users If you are sitting there and BYTEDANCE decides to sell it to you, which I don’t see happening, they aint taking even twitter billions for a $300b + asset PLEASE SAY NO. I’ll leave you with this When you sit at the negotiating table, you always look for the sucker. If you don’t see one ….”
Cuban doesn’t supply the ending to the old poker table adage, but it goes like this: if you don’t see the sucker at the table, it’s you. Because Cuban and O’Leary are ostensibly friends, Cuban ends cheerfully: “Good luck!”
@kevinolearytv , this is like a bad eps of @ABCSharkTank. I know what you will do.
You will tell TT or their bankers, it’s better to take the money you were able to raise from Oracle and whoever, than to end up with nothing if you get closed down. You will ask the guy who… https://t.co/dYVe0pCCx9— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) January 14, 2025