New Mavs CEO envisions new area, aims for global growth

DALLAS — This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.

As hundreds of the top business leaders in Dallas-Fort Worth gathered at Globe Life Field last week, it was Rick Welts who found himself at the center of attention.

Groups of people constantly lined up around Welts at a reception following the Dallas Regional Chamber’s annual meeting on Jan. 16 for the chance to chat, shake hands and snap a picture with the new CEO of the Dallas Mavericks.

Greg Bibb, CEO of the Dallas Wings, referred to Welts as the “godfather of the WNBA” when asked about the growth of women’s sports during a panel discussion and said it was a “tremendous honor” to have him in North Texas.

Charlotte Jones, chief brand officer of the Dallas Cowboys, went out of her way to welcome Welts to the Metroplex. She offered the same words of advice to him that former Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss gave to her family after her father, Jerry Jones, bought the Cowboys in 1989.

“If you love Dallas, it will love you back,” Jones said.

Welts, a 2018 inductee into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, certainly seems to be taking those words to heart. In his first sit-down interview since taking over as CEO of the Mavericks on Jan. 1, Welts told DBJ the first two and a half weeks have been like “drinking through a fire hose” but said the reception so far has been like nothing he has ever experienced before in his career.

“Without question it’s the most welcoming place I’ve ever lived,” Welts said. “I’m blown away by the reception. And I’m not just talking about our staff. At games, season-ticket holders are coming over and introducing themselves and offering anything they can do to help. … It’s really quite extraordinary and I don’t know if people who live here kind of appreciate how people from outside are welcomed.”

In particular, Welts said everyone he has spoken to has expressed “so much positivity and so much excitement about the Mavericks.” Welts shares that enthusiasm. He came out of retirement to help take the Mavs to the next level as a sports organization. He wants to compete for championships but also wants to grow the brand by taking advantage of international opportunities, transforming the fan experience with a new arena and ensuring the franchise remains at the forefront of the evolution in TV broadcasting and sports streaming.

“The goal here is to really focus on the business operation and really pick our priorities and strategy on how we’re going to accomplish this now. It’s right there to be had,” Welts said. “What’s different about this for me is like, holy cow, we have a great basketball team. I’ve never gone to a team before that’s got great basketball. That’s pretty amazing. What a giant head start.”

While the Mavericks currently find themselves in the middle of the pack in the Western Conference standings with a 23-20 record as of Jan. 21, the franchise is coming off a conference title and appearance in the NBA Finals last year. Since Mark Cuban entered the picture in the early 2000s, the Mavericks have had only four losing seasons. In that time, they’ve made 19 playoff appearances and made it to the Finals three times, including winning the only championship in franchise history after defeating the LeBron James-led Miami Heat in 2011.

At Welts’ previous career stops, he came into much tougher situations. He was the 35th employee in the NBA’s league office back in 1982 and the first person ever hired to go and talk to corporate partners about investing in the league. As one of the top lieutenants of the late former commissioner David Stern, Welts helped create the NBA All-Star Weekend and aided in the formation of the WNBA.

In 2002, Welts became CEO and president of a middling Phoenix Suns franchise and within a couple of years saw them become one of the top title contenders in the NBA. The Suns, led by former Mavericks guard Steve Nash, ran the “seven-seconds-or-less” offense that in many ways paved the way for the high-scoring playing style seen across today’s NBA. Ticket sales and sponsorships soared.

Welts became president of the Golden State Warriors in 2011. At the time, the Warriors had only made the playoffs once in the previous 17 seasons. Under his leadership, the franchise became one of the most dominant dynasties in NBA history, with five consecutive appearances in the Finals from 2015 to 2019, including three championships. By the time he retired in 2021, the Warriors had become the most valuable NBA franchise.

Welts admitted the job at the Mavericks is different.

“This is not the same as the other opportunities that I’ve looked at,” Welts said. “With my kind of DNA, I look for like high potential success but maybe big opportunity at the same time.”

Patrick Dumont, governor and co-owner of the Dallas Mavericks, managed to lure Welts out of retirement by offering him a new kind of opportunity — the chance to help take an already-successful franchise to new heights in a region that has been recognized as arguably the best for sports business in the country.

“I think there’s an acceleration that can happen in our impact in our business community and also in building the Mavericks brand on a bigger stage,” Welts said.

A major part of taking that next step will include building a “playing facility that will support the Mavs being able to compete at a championship level for as far in the future as I can possibly see,” Welts said. With the Warriors, he oversaw development of the $1.4 billion Chase Center, which opened in 2019.

It was a grueling seven-year process to get the Chase Center built that involved a stroke of luck: Salesforce grew so fast that the land it owned was too small for a new headquarters. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered to sell the property to the Warriors, which enabled the Chase Center to be built on private property instead of public property.

The Chase Center set the Warriors up for the next 30 years, Welts said, and his experience leading the project was one of the main reasons Dumont brought him to the Mavericks. The Mavericks’ current 30-year lease at the American Airlines Center expires in 2031 and the team’s owners want to build a new arena, possibly as the centerpiece of a destination resort and casino in partnership with Las Vegas Sands Corp.

Dumont is the son-in-law of Miriam Adelson, the widow of late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who founded Las Vegas Sands. The Adelson and Dumont families bought a majority stake in the Mavericks from Mark Cuban in December 2023. Dumont said at a press conference in mid-December introducing Welts that his family’s goal is “to build the best facility possible for the Dallas Mavericks.”

A new arena would take years to build and faces significant hurdles — including whether the majority-Republican Texas legislature ever gets on board with casino gaming. Welts said the goal would be to build a venue that will “create an unbelievable fan experience that is the greatest expression of being a Mavericks fan in Dallas” and also provide memories for concertgoers and other types of events as well.

Welts, a Seattle native, remembers his first concert — when he saw Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys at the old Seattle Center Coliseum in 1965.

“That’s what these things are. They’re not about watching basketball games. These are creating lifetime memories that enhance people’s lives,” Welts said. “That’s the privilege of what we get to do. That process is starting now. I have no idea where it’s going. I have no idea what the outcome is. I wish I could give you some great insight other than that’s what we’re going to create.”

Meantime, Welts said the Mavericks still want to get the most of out of the AAC while the team continues to play there.

“The Adelson family commitment is to invest in Dallas, and we’re ready to invest in the arena today to make it a great fan experience,” he said.

The 24-year-old AAC lacks many of the amenities found at newer arenas that have opened in recent years in terms of restaurants, clubs and retail, Welts said. While he couldn’t get into specifics, Welts said he and other team executives will “look for ways” to work with the leadership of the Dallas Stars, city officials and the arena’s managers to fund and implement improvements.

Welts also said any changes will help promote the experience for everyone, from those paying for courtside seats to those sitting in the top row of the upper bowl.

“It’s the Adelson family focus,” Welts said. “Dallas is going to be a beneficiary of a lot of investment over the period that this ownership group owns the Mavericks.”

For Welts, who has spent pretty much his entire career around the game of basketball, his return to the NBA comes at a time when the league stands at a crossroads.

For the second consecutive season, the NBA set all-time records for total attendance, average attendance and sellouts in 2023-24. Yet this season the league has seen its TV ratings dip and some pundits have criticized the current style of play in the NBA that features barrages of three-point shots.

Welts believes the NBA has a bright future because of its opportunity to grow internationally and thinks the Mavericks can be at the forefront.

“If you’re an investor in sports and you step away from any single market, you’d be investing in basketball and soccer right now, because looking out over the next 20 years … basketball is a bigger opportunity globally than the NFL is.”

Basketball and soccer are the only two sports played broadly in most countries around the world, Welts said. For children growing up playing soccer in countries like Argentina and Brazil, they dream to play for the big club team and for their national team in the World Cup. For children growing up in those same countries playing basketball, their dream remains playing in the NBA.

“That is an unbelievable business advantage as we look to what the next 20 years is going to feel like for our industry,” Welts said. “I think you’re going to hear some really interesting developments going forward. The NBA has the opportunity to own basketball worldwide. No other sports league has the market opportunity that basketball has and that the NBA has.”

Ensuring the Mavericks take advantage of the global opportunity will be a key part of Welts’ strategy to grow the franchise’s value. When Welts retired from the Warriors, they had become the most valuable NBA franchise. The Mavericks ranked ninth among the league’s 32 teams with a valuation of $4.7 billion in October 2024, according to Forbes.

For more than 20 years the Mavericks have been at the center of the NBA’s international growth. Dirk Nowitzki, the team’s greatest player ever, was one of the first international stars in the NBA, hailing from Germany. Luka Dončić, the team’s current star, is from Slovenia. And Dumont played a key role in brokering peace between the NBA and China, paving the way for the league to resume playing preseason games in the country in 2025 after a six-year pause.

Welts said he does not know “what the roadmap looks like yet,” but he feels “energized” by the opportunity.

The “biggest issue” facing the NBA and the Mavericks, Welts said, is the “broken model of local game distribution.” He said regional sports networks, like the old Fox Sports Southwest and Bally Sports Southwest that used to air Mavericks and Dallas Stars games, are a thing of the past.

Currently, the Mavericks employ what Welts described as a “hybrid model” with the MavsTV streaming app. Fans who subscribe to the app are able to watch all games not exclusively televised nationally. Games are also available on local TV station WFAA for those who have a digital antenna.

“The consensus across the teams in the league is this is a very difficult transition period,” Welts said. “A lot of different models have been created locally amongst NBA teams. Now, none of them are the answer. But the answer is that local sports in local markets is extremely valuable. We just have to figure out a different model for delivering that, that we can monetize and get the distribution that we need. It’s coming. It’s not going to happen this year. It’s not going to happen next year, and hopefully can happen the year after. “

He said the NBA has a study underway that Welts expects will “create some interesting new models for local television distribution.”

“It’s way too early to say what that’s going to look like, but it is the biggest single conversation from a business perspective going on in the league right now, and I’m really excited about it because this is a very difficult period. We’re doing the best we can with MavsTV. Every team is doing the best they can with the resources they’ve been able to cobble together.”