NBA Team Owners Michael Jordan and Mark Cuban Join Ted Leonsis' Legal Sports Gambling Plans

Michael Jordan and Mark Cuban are two of many investors, joining Ted Leonsis, who are making plans of legalizing sports gambling through a company called Sportsradar.

As reported by TV News Room, Sportsradar is a fast-growing sports statistics business, which supplies sports data to bookmakers all over the globe. They also provide information to companies like DraftKings and FanDuel. However, the company does more than just provide sports data for gambling purposes. The company is also developing various applications for its data and has secure partnerships with the NFL, NASCAR and the NHL. As of right now, they work with Google, Facebook and Twitter in the U.S.

Sportsradar AG was founded as SportsData in 2010 at the University of St. Thomas. It was acquired by the Swiss statistics company, Sportsradar in 2013 and is now the NFL's distributor of real-time scores, player statistics and play-by-play data. Rob Phythian (co-founder of Fantasy Football Weekly and the website FanBall) started the company along with Dave Abbott, (founder and chief technology office of Internet Broadcasting Systems).

According to Bloomberg, Jordan and Cuban (along with other investors) have invested in a $44 million funding led by Revolution Growth, an investment firm co-founded by AOL founder Steve Case and Ted Leonsis, the owner of several Washington sports teams, in hopes of legalizing sports gambling.

Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards, Michael Jordan, the owner of the Charlotte Hornets and Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, will be valuable strategic partners, said Carsten Koerl, founder and CEO of Sportradar, as reported by Star Tribune.

"Sportradar is well-positioned to be a global force in the sports data business," Mark Cuban tells TechCrunch. "Their data scientists are amazing."

Michael Jordan, Mark Cuban, and Ted Leonsis are putting millions on sports betting's future https://t.co/y7wivPI3ES pic.twitter.com/ZMtxLCe3SV

— Bloomberg Business (@business) October 27, 2015

Now, as reported by Washington Post, the last time Leonsis and Jordan teamed up together on a business was 15 years ago, and it didn't end too well, as Jordan played for the Washington Wizards for two seasons and then served as the team's head of basketball operations. Abe Pollin (former Wizards owner) fired Jordan in 2003, as Leonsis took over.

Hopefully things will turn out differently this time, given the fact that sports gambling actually becomes legal in the United States.