Dallas Mavericks sale approved by NBA Board of Governors
DALLAS - The sale of the controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban to Las Vegas casino magnate Miriam Adelson and her family has been approved by the NBA Board of Governors.
"The NBA Board of Governors has approved the sale of the controlling interest in the Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban to the families of Dr. Miriam Adelson and Sivan and Patrick Dumont," said a news release from the league.
The approval opens the door to Mark Cuban selling his majority stake in the Mavericks to the Adelsons.
READ MORE: Miriam Adelson: What you should know about the Dallas Mavericks reported buyer
The vote puts Sands Corp. COO Patrick Dumont, Adelson's son-in-law, in charge of the Mavs, with a 73 percent stake in the team. Cuban will maintain 27 percent and will become the alternate governor.
Cuban says despite the sale, he will continue to control the basketball operations of the team.
Mark Cuban on partnership with Mavs potential new owners: 'They aren't trying to be basketball people'
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban says he will still be a large part of the team's basketball operations after selling his majority stake in the Mavs.
The purchase is in the valuation range of $3.5 billion.
The transaction is expected to close this week.
Cuban has said he wanted to partner with Las Vegas Sands with a long-range plan of building an arena in downtown Dallas that would also include a hotel and casino.
Gambling isn’t legal in Texas, and efforts to legalize it face steep odds. Still, Miriam Adelson has made no secret of her push to bring casino gambling to the Lone Star State.
She pumped more than $2 million last year into a political action committee, called Texas Sands, which donated lavishly to state legislators and swarmed the GOP-controlled state Capitol with lobbyists. She gave an additional $1 million separately to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
But the spending blitz failed to deliver a breakthrough this year in the Texas Legislature, where resistance to legalizing casinos runs deep.
Texas already has a billionaire NBA owner who is a casino operator, Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, who also supports bringing casinos to his home state but has watched lawmakers sink the idea year after year.
News of the sale of the Mavs broke last month, hours after Las Vegas Sands announced that Adelson was selling $2 billion of her shares to buy an unspecified professional sports team.
Property tax records show that a company with the same mailing address as Las Vegas Sands Corp. purchased more than 100 acres of land near where Texas Stadium once stood in Irving.
There is no indication of what the company plans to do with the property.
Schuyler Dixon with the Associated Press contributed to this story