If you watch Shark Tank, one of the people on the show is Mark Cuban and when he does a deal, he often thinks about links to Dallas Mavericks NBA basketball team he owns. This is a natural thing to do, whatever industry you are in, if something interesting came to you it all likelihood you would link it to what you do. Mr. Cuban announced this is his last season and it turned out he wants a lower profile with the Dallas Mavericks.

In an article by Ken Belson of the New York Times News Service, Mr. Cuban is selling a majority of his NBA team to Miriam Adelson of the Sands Corporation. The company owns the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas as well as gambling properties in Singapore and Macao (near Hong Kong). The cost to the Sands would be $2 billion. Mr. Cuban wants to build a new stadium in Dallas with a casino attached to it in the coming years or when Texas allows legalized gambling.

A number of years ago, the owners of gambling resorts were prohibited from being owners of professional sports franchises because of the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal. The White Sox were in the World Series against the Cincinnati Reds and some of the players were paid not to do 100% on every play to ensure the Sox lost. The winners would be the Reds and gamblers who bet on the Reds to win. After the news came to the forefront, gambling was outlawed in the professional ranks.

However, since the internet, gambling could be done on phones and tablets or flying to Las Vegas to officially place your bets. Unofficially there has been many ways to gamble. With the changing of gambling laws in states, the gambling owners have now bought a team in NBA.

For the NFL, teams were not awarded to Las Vegas until the Raiders left Oakland to a brand new sold out stadium. The NFL held its draft in Vegas as well as the Super Bowl will be played in February. The MLB had a history of suspending players who were found to be gambling, now the rules may change, and Pete Rose might go to the Hall of Fame.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, it is important to remember society changes and rules change. One can easily argue not for the best, but rules can change. For your investment, are you aware of the government regulations which help your investments? Due to dividend paying companies tend to be profitable which means they have office and manufacturing space all over the 50 states and very often the local governments offered incentives to the companies for the jobs that would be created. The incentives are bound up in regulations and sometimes government change the regulations. This is why companies have operations in more than one state and use it to trade with each for the seemingly long-term jobs.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.