Before Google became the front door to the internet, people did something much simpler. They would go directly to websites by typing simple words or names into their browser, hoping it would take them where they wanted. That small behavior created one of the earliest digital land grabs, and Mark Cuban was right in the middle of it.
In a recent “TBPN” podcast, Cuban described how he aggressively bought up domain names in the early days of the web, treating them like prime real estate. “I own final4.com, I own baseball.com, I own sandwich.com, you name it, I’ve bought it,” he said.
Don’t Miss:
At the time, the logic was straightforward. If someone wanted something, they might just type it in. That made generic domain names incredibly valuable, even before search engines organized the web.
After buying broadcast dotcom for $8,000 in 1997, @mcuban went on a domain name buying spree when he realized he could use simple URLs to route traffic to the site.
As a result, he says he now owns democracy dotcom, baseball dotcom, mrpresident dotcom, sandwich dotcom,… pic.twitter.com/shnF9ZJcJN
— TBPN (@tbpn) March 19, 2026
Cuban said he didn’t just buy a few. He went all in. “I would buy like just packages of URLs,” he said, explaining how he used them to generate traffic and redirect users back to his main platform, Broadcast.com. “I own mrpresident.com. I own democracy.com. All kinds of really cool stuff.”
In response to the video, Cuban said in a post on X that he sold baseball.com and sandwich.com years ago, but still has the others he mentioned. Today, many of those domains aren’t actively monetized, and some aren’t even accessible to the public, sitting unused despite their value.
Trending: Skip the Regrets: The Essential Retirement Tips Experts Wish Everyone Knew Earlier.
The strategy worked because the internet had no clear structure yet. “Everything was a portal,” Cuban said on the “TBPN” podcast. “Everything was a front door.” Owning a simple, memorable domain name could result in instant traffic without any marketing spend.
That same thinking helped Cuban build Broadcast.com, one of the earliest streaming companies, which he sold to Yahoo for about $5.7 billion in stock in 1999. Looking back, he called streaming “the most obvious thing I’d ever seen in my career.”
Even though the internet looks completely different now, Cuban’s early moves reveal a pattern he still follows.
