Crypto News: Bw Reads: Can Dallas be the next Las Vegas?

Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Today, Randall Williams and Christopher Beam write about Dallas Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont, who’s also Sheldon Adelson’s son-in-law. Dumont has big plans for his team and its city — and got off to a rocky start. You can find the whole story online (free!) here.

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Patrick Dumont grinned as he walked to his courtside seat to watch his team, the Dallas Mavericks, play the Sacramento Kings. The owner, wearing a dark blue blazer and boyish haircut, greeted a young fan with a handshake as he passed. But something was off; the arena was erupting in boos. Dumont sat down and turned to Rick Welts, the Mavs’ chief executive officer. “Is that for me?” Dumont seems to ask in a video capturing the moment. Welts appears to answer in the affirmative.

The booing shouldn’t have come as a surprise. About a week earlier, on Feb. 1, 2025, the team’s general manager, Nico Harrison, had made what Mavericks fans and NBA watchers widely considered one of the most shocking basketball decisions of all time. With Dumont’s approval, he had traded Luka Dončić, the Mavs’ beloved, 25-year-old superstar, to the Los Angeles Lakers. Even more bizarrely, Harrison didn’t shop Dončić to the highest bidder. He spoke exclusively with the Lakers in secret conversations, and in return for Dončić likely didn’t get as many draft picks as he could have.

Dumont and Harrison at a 2024 preseason game in Dallas. Photographer: Glenn James/Getty Images — Dumont and Harrison at a 2024 preseason game in Dallas.

The initial reaction to the news, which dropped late on a Saturday night, had been incredulity. Many fans and commentators assumed it was a joke. Then disbelief turned to anger. Fans staged a mock funeral, casket and all, outside the Mavericks’ arena, holding signs saying “We Demand Answers” and “Luka — Take Us With You!” Most fans blamed Harrison, but much of the anger was directed at Dumont.

When Dumont bought the team from longtime owner Mark Cuban for $3.5 billion in December 2023, he was the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp. — the casino and resort giant founded by Sheldon Adelson, Dumont’s father-in-law, who died in 2021. Dumont’s mother-in-law, Miriam Adelson, was the 43rd-richest person in the world at the time of the team’s purchase, with a $34 billion net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and a top Republican donor. (She’s now worth $43 billion.) Together, Dumont and Miriam would own a majority stake in the Mavericks. Dumont would oversee the team as its governor, representing the club at owners’ meetings.

At first, Dumont’s arrival seemed like a blessing. After a sluggish first half of the season, the team made some key trades and started winning. Powered by the chemistry of Dončić and Kyrie Irving, two of the most prolific scorers in the league, they won the Western Conference. In photos, Dumont smiles holding the conference trophy, as if he can’t quite believe it. “I had no idea what I was signing up for,” Dumont says. “I was just really excited about NBA basketball.”

Dončić told an interviewer he’d planned to finish his career in Dallas. “I feel like my heart was broken,” he said. Photographer: Sam Hodde/Getty Images — Dončić told an interviewer he’d planned to finish his career in Dallas. “I feel like my heart was broken,” he said.

But the Dončić trade set off a bomb. Observers wondered if Dumont had a clue what he was doing. Cuban later said on a podcast that he’d been “just as dumbfounded as everybody else.” “I was getting the side-eye from the doorman in my apartment building,” says Welts. Dumont tried to control the damage. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News, he explained the reasons for the decision, taking veiled swipes at Dončić‘s “character” and work ethic. Harrison said that he wanted to build a team focused on defense and that the players the Mavericks got in the trade would help do that. Dončić later told an interviewer that he’d planned to finish his career in Dallas: “I feel like my heart was broken.” In a fireside chat with business leaders soon after the trade, Dumont said, “If we lost any of our fans’ trust, it was hard, and I apologize. But I hope that over time we can regain that trust through hard work.”

But there was another reason many Texans didn’t trust Dumont: his day job.

Even before Cuban sold the Mavericks, he’d pitched a partnership with Sands as a boon for the team, Dallas and Texas. The Adelson family, he argued, would bring the kind of “destination resort-style casinos” that Sheldon Adelson had helped pioneer, first in Las Vegas and then in Macao and Singapore. Cuban had long mourned that Dallas failed to draw tourists. Plus, the Dallas-Fort Worth area was positioned perfectly to become a business-leisure gambling hub, with ample space to build and one of the most trafficked airports in the world. The Adelsons could usher in a new era for the city.

One hitch: Gambling was illegal in Texas. But, starting in late 2020, Sands had begun lobbying state politicians to legalize it. At the same time, the company began searching the Dallas-Fort Worth area for space to construct a casino resort. Executives found the perfect spot in a patch of land in Irving, northwest of Dallas, adjacent to the old Cowboys stadium. Just months before Dumont closed the Mavericks deal, Sands bought the Irving plot and began the slow work of getting permission to build on it.

The timing looked promising. The Mavericks’ lease at American Airlines Center would be up in 2031, and Cuban had said he wanted a new arena. If the stars aligned, they could potentially build it at the Irving location as part of a massive entertainment district, including a casino. The next Vegas Strip could be developed around an internationally beloved NBA franchise — both Dončić and German former star Dirk Nowitzki had boosted the team’s overseas fan base — only 10 minutes from Dallas-Forth Worth airport.

For Sands, Texas represents a business opportunity. For Dumont, it’s his shot at a legacy — the chance to make his mark on a city and an industry, like his father-in-law did. In an interview at the NBA’s Manhattan offices, Dumont, never one to overstate things, puts his Texas ambitions in more modest terms. “There’s an opportunity that we think is quite substantial and would benefit the state of Texas, if the right framework is put in place,” he says.

Dumont, who lives in Las Vegas with his wife and seven children, says he’s not a gambler. On the other hand, thanks to his Sands job, “technically I’m on the other side of every single bet.” When it comes to achieving his vision in Texas, he has the money, the connections and the will. All he needs is local buy-in. And, of course, a bit of luck.

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