Mark Cuban's Harbinger Sports Buys Into the A's Ahead of the Las Vegas Move

Harbinger Sports Partners, a private investment firm that specializes in buying minority ownership interests in professional sports franchises across the NBA, NFL, MLB and other major U.S. leagues, has acquired a minority stake in MLB's Athletics. Latham & Watkins confirmed on September 8 that it advised Harbinger on the transaction, running the deal through a multidisciplinary team spanning M&A, investment funds, tax and finance.

The timing is the point. The Athletics are in the middle of relocating from Oakland to Las Vegas, with a roughly $2 billion ballpark on the Strip on schedule to open before the 2028 season, according to Nevada officials cited by the Associated Press. Buying in now, ahead of the move and the new venue coming online, is a classic pre-relocation arbitrage play: franchise values for relocating or newly-stadium-equipped clubs have historically jumped sharply once venues are secured and revenue streams reset.

Harbinger's structure — a fund built specifically to hold minority stakes across the NBA, NFL and MLB — is itself part of a broader shift in how capital enters team ownership. Leagues have progressively loosened rules on institutional and fund ownership over the past several years, and firms like Harbinger exist precisely to give investors diversified, professionally managed exposure to franchise appreciation without requiring any single investor to clear a league's control-owner bar.

For Cuban, the move is notable mostly for what it isn't: a repeat of his high-profile, hands-on NBA ownership run with the Dallas Mavericks, which he sold down to the Adelson/Dumont family in stages after 2023. Cuban has publicly said he passed on chances to buy into the NFL's Buffalo Bills and a WNBA franchise, citing the emotional toll of exiting the Mavericks. A minority, fund-structured position in the Athletics offers financial upside in a relocating MLB franchise without the day-to-day ownership demands.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported this week that A's valuations have been climbing alongside recent sales of other MLB clubs, part of a broader repricing of baseball franchises that own or control new stadium developments in growth markets. A move to Las Vegas — with its tourism-driven gate potential, tax environment and Strip-adjacent real estate upside — gives the Athletics a growth narrative that raw on-field performance in Oakland never could.

MLB has been comparatively conservative about institutional and private-equity ownership relative to the NBA and NFL, but that has been changing. Deals bringing outside investment funds and individual investors into franchise cap tables — including reports of other new stakeholders entering MLB ownership groups this year — suggest the league is increasingly comfortable with diversified capital structures as franchise prices climb into the multi-billion-dollar range.

Financial terms of Harbinger's stake were not disclosed in the Latham & Watkins release, and it's unclear what percentage of the club Cuban's fund now holds. But the structure itself — a dedicated minority-stakes vehicle taking a position ahead of a relocation-driven valuation reset — is likely to be studied closely by other funds eyeing similar plays across MLB, where several relocating or stadium-seeking franchises remain in play.

The bigger signal for the business of baseball: MLB's next wave of value creation is increasingly tied to real estate and market relocation rather than television money, and financial sponsors are positioning early to capture it. Expect more Harbinger-style minority funds to chase stakes in clubs with unresolved stadium situations before, not after, those situations get resolved.