Shark Tank: Vegas Reveals Favorites to Replace Mark Cuban

After fourteen seasons, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has decided it’s time to wrap up his run on Shark Tank, the ABC hit that premiered in 2009. Cuban told Showtime Basketball’s All the Smoke with former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson that he would be wrapping up his run on the series after the upcoming, sixteenth season. Cuban did not give a reason for his departure, but it seems he is in a shifting-gears mode, with a recent report also saying that he planned to divest himself of his majority stake in the Mavericks. 

The billionaire, who has flirted with politics and enjoys the limelight more than almost any other sports owner in recent memory, was probably the most notable of the “sharks” — Shark Tank‘s venture capitalists, who offer contestants money in exchange for full or partial ownership of the contestant’s work — before the show premiered. Fast forward almost two decades, and he isn’t going to be an easy person to replace.

“Next year, our 16th year, is gonna be my last year, so I got one more year to go,” Cuban told Barnes and Jackson in an interview you can see in full below.

Cuban came on board in season three, and while ABC hasn’t yet hinted at who could replace him, there are some ideas floating around out there — enough that you can place a bet on it in Las Vegas right now. The list of favorites include household names and those who are a bit more obscure — not unlike the original batch of hosts.

Right now, Bookies.com’s Adam Thompson is predicting Emme Grede (co-founder of Good American Denim and Cuban’s personal choice to replace him, if he were to decide) to be the most likely candidate to join Daymond John, Barbara Corcoran, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, and Kevin O’Leary on the show. Other top candidates include Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin and baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez.

Rubin and Tony Zu, co-founder and CEO of Door Dash, are both set to appear as guests on the show this season. Zu is #5 on the oddsmakers’ list, squeezing in between Kind LLC boss Daniel Lubetzky and reality TV star Kylie Jenner.

Here’s the full list, along with their current odds (you can see more details at the Bookies.com site):

Emma Grede: 16.7%
Michael Rubin: 15.4%
Alex Rodriguez: 14.3%
Daniel Lubetzky: 13.3%
Tony Zu: 11.8%
Kylie Jenner: 11.8%
Gwyneth Paltrow: 9.1%
Ashton Kutcher: 6.7%
Kevin Hart: 6.3%
Jennifer Pritzker: 6.3% 

Some of the biggest names on the list would be difficult to get on the show. Kevin Hart and Kylie Jenner, for instance, seem to be so busy with their own productions that it could be hard to get them to commit to a network schedule for something they don’t own. Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher — fresh off of a scandal for publicly supporting convicted rapist Danny Masterson — seems like somebody who might not mind a chance to rehabilitate his image by getting in front of a camera and reminding the audience why they fell in love with him.

Who would you like to see step into Cuban’s shoes? Sound off below.