Mark Cuban Injects 'Shark Tank' Cash Into Fantasy Football Trophy Company

Mark Cuban is making a big investment in a fantasy football trophy company. According to TMZ, the Dallas Mavericks owner is putting more than $600,000 in TophySmack. Former TMZ staffers Dax Holt and Matt Walsh pitched the idea to Cuban on a recent episode of Shark Tank and could get Cuban to invest.

Getting into fantasy sports isn't anything new for Cuban. Last week it was announced that the 62-year-old entrepreneur invested in Fantasy Labs, a daily fantasy sports analytics platform. Co-founder Jonathan Bales told Forbes it is a "significant enough amount of money to bring on a bunch of talented people so we can really scale our product development to create new tools and expand to new verticals, as well as ramp up marketing efforts."

"The explosive growth of fantasy sports, and its involvement with new categories of competition like eSports, increase the need for high-end resources like the platform offered by Fantasy Labs," Cuban stated. "I'm excited to be involved with a company that is working to advance an industry that is poised for huge growth."

Cuban has always been a sports fan, which led him to become the owner of the Mavericks. He purchased a majority stake in the team in 2000, and the team was able to win its first NBA championship in 2011. Five years prior, the Mavericks played in their first-ever NBA Finals. Currently, the team is looking to get back to the top with their star player Luka Doncic. He was drafted No. 3 overall by the Atlanta Hawks but was quickly traded to the Mavericks. In just two seasons, Doncic has become a top player in the league, named the All-NBA First Team last year. He was also named Rookie of the Year in 2019.

"Luka's job is to make everybody on the court better and to help us win games," Cuban said to The Dallas Morning News in December. "We saw what we can do against the Clippers. But we saw what happens when we don't make shots like against the Suns and the Lakers or guys don't do their job and box out against the Lakers. Luka knows that when that happens, he's going to get the blame, no matter what."