Mark Cuban played a League of Legends charity showmatch at IEM San Jose yesterday, and he said some pretty interesting things during the pre-match interview.
Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and appears on the ABC reality TV series Shark Tank, had a very strong team of professionals playing alongside him—and they pretty much dominated before winning the game.
Before the match started, interviewer Kristine Leahy asked a question that everyone seemed to be thinking: What exactly was Cuban doing at IEM, and was he thinking of buying a team or investing in esports?
“You’re just going to have to stay tuned,” Cuban said in response. “One thing I will say is I love Colin [Cowherd] but he’s an idiot when it comes to esports.”
Cowherd—a sports media personality and former ESPN host—has often had a stereotypical view of esports, calling gamers nerds and looking down on the competitive gaming scene.
Cuban was quick to call this out and show that he really enjoys League of Legends.
“I’m a noob. I’m still getting into it, but I love it,” he said. “It’s like playing five-dimensional chess against the world. It’s like one of the smartest games I’ve ever played, you’ve got to have dexterity, you’ve got to be quick. This is a real sport and people are going to figure it out really really quick.”
While Cuban said he has only played three games of League of Legends, he had a pretty strong team to back him up: Joedat “ Voyboy” Esfahani, Andy “ Reginald” Dinh, William “ Meteos” Hartman, and Yiliang “ Doublelift” Peng.
Cuban’s team was going up against that of Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, who had Hai “Hai” Du Lam, George “HotshotGG” Georgallidis, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg and Steve “Chauster” Chau on his team.
Just before the interview was over and the ARAM match was set to start, Cuban dropped an f-bomb, which earned him a $15,000 fine. He was informed of this after the game and—being worth an estimated $3 billion U.S., according to Forbes—opted to drop another f-bomb to add another $15,000 for the charity.
Cuban is not new to esports—he was a first-round investor in esports startup Unikrn, as part of a team that invested $7 million into the company.
Image via ESL/eslgaming.com
