This Day In Market History: Mark Cuban Sells Broadcast.com To Yahoo!

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that occurred on this date.

What Happened? On April 1, 1999, Yahoo! acquired Broadcast.com for $5.7 billion.

Where The Market Was: The Dow finished the day at 9,832.51. The S&P 500 finished at 1,293.72.

What Else Was Going On In The World? In 1999, Walmart Inc WMT purchased U.K. supermarket chain ASDA. The U.S. saw its first cases of the West Nile virus. The average annual U.S. income was $40,810.

Cuban Cashes Out: Broadcast.com was founded under the name AudioNet in September 1995 by Christopher Jaeb. Later that year, entrepreneur Mark Cuban took a sizable stake in the company. Broadcast.com was an internet sports radio company that allowed internet users to listen to radio broadcasts of out-of-town sports games online.

In 1998, Cuban and company took Broadcast.com public during the Wall Street dot-com bubble. The stock’s share price skyrocketed by 250% on its first day of trading. The public company was then valued at around $1 billion, making Cuban's stake worth about $300 million.

Nine months after the IPO, Yahoo! announced a $5.7-billion buyout of Broadcast.com. Later that year, Cuban sold most of his shares of Yahoo! acquired during the deal, making him a billionaire at age 41.

The decision to sell the company to Yahoo! was a savvy one. After the dot-com bubble burst, Yahoo! shut down Broadcast.com completely just three years later.

Ironically, Verizon Communications Inc. VZ ultimately acquired Yahoo! In 2017 for $4.5 billion, less than what Yahoo! paid for Broadcast.com back in 1999.

Today, Mark Cuban is the owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and is invested in dozens of startup companies. His net worth is estimated to be $4.7 billion.

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia.