Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban thinks going woke is ‘good business’

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Shark Tank star Mark Cuban says companies are going woke for one reason: it makes good business sense.

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“There is a reason almost all the top 10 market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke.’ It’s good business,” he said in an interview with Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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Cuban weighed in on the issue after both Bud Light and Target became mired in controversy when both companies were accused of pushing LGBTQ ideology.

After Bud Light partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney in April, the company went into a free-fall with its sales dropping more than 25% from last year.

Travis Tritt and Kid Rock announced they were boycotting the brand after Mulvaney, who documented her transition from male to female on TikTok thanks to her Day 365 of Girlhood video series, received several cases of Bud Light with the trans activist’s face printed on the side of the cans to celebrate her “womanhood.”

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“F*** Bud Light, and f*** Anheuser-Busch,” Rock said alongside a video of himself shooting up several cases of suds.

Meanwhile, Target Corporation lost billions in market capitalization after it pushed “tuck-friendly” swimwear alongside the launch of a Pride-themed clothing line, including items aimed at children, last month.

This year, the U.S.-based retailer offered more than 2,000 products, including clothing, books, music and home furnishings as part of its Pride Collection, Reuters reported. The items included “gender fluid” mugs, “queer all year” calendars and books for children aged 2-8 titled “Bye Bye, Binary,” “Pride 1,2,3” and “I’m not a girl.”

Some merchandise was designed by Erik Carnell, who has used satanic and occult imagery in some of his previous work.

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The market value of the Minneapolis-based company went into free-fall after social media users reacted negatively to its campaign.

Cuban’s Shark Tank castmate Kevin O’Leary was quick to criticize both outfits.

“When Bud happened, I can’t believe that boards didn’t wake up to that decimation market cap … Budweiser was the American beer. It took decades to build that brand and they blew it up in 30 hours,” O’Leary told guest host Rachel Campos-Duffy on Jesse Watters Primetime in a segment that aired late last month.

O’Leary said Target’s subsequent misstep was proof why many companies stay out of controversial areas of public life.

“When you are selling consumer goods and services, you cannot be partisan in any way,” O’Leary said. “Let me give you an example. Do you ever hear a CEO that represents a company ever talking about abortion? Never. Because that is an issue that will never be resolved. It’s a personal issue, it’s a family issue, it’s a religious issue. It’s partisan forever. You don’t touch it. Same thing with politics, same thing with gender identity. Everybody has a personal opinion about it. When you actually get involved in a fight like that, you lose 50% of your constituency. Target wants to sell to everybody … They’ve made a huge mistake.”

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk echoed those sentiments with his own prediction that Target’s Pride merchandising decisions would result in shareholder lawsuits against the retailer.

Musk tweeted, “Won’t be long before there are class-action lawsuits by shareholders against the company and board of directors for destruction of shareholder value.”

But Cuban said the “dip” was “meaningless,” telling the Post-Gazette that it was unlikely that individual stockholders were punishing the companies over the ensuing controversies.

“First a dip in market cap is meaningless,” the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks said. “You have to realize that there aren’t many individual owners of stocks — almost all ownership is via funds, and most trading is quantitative. So, it’s not like the drop is because tens of thousands of individual holders sold their stocks.”

Cuban also said that despite Bud Light and Target being drawn into a culture war that has cost them billions, they likely aren’t too worried about any long-term effects.

“Most CEOs have enough experience to know to just wait out the news cycle until they go to the next one,” he said.

[email protected]

Twitter: @markhdaniell

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