Kevin O'Leary responds to 'Shark Tank' co-star Mark Cuban: 'We don't agree on much'
O'Leary Ventures chairman Kevin O'Leary joins 'Fox & Friends' to weigh in after Mark Cuban claimed it's 'good business' for companies to go woke despite the major losses reported by Bud Light and Target.
"Shark Tank" investor Kevin O'Leary hit back at co-star Mark Cuban, who claimed it's "good business" for companies like Target and Bud Light to go "woke." On "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday, O'Leary explained that getting involved in politics will only alienate part of a company's customer base.
CORPORATE ‘WOKE-A-METER’: REPORT REVEALS COMPANIES AT HIGHEST RISK OF ‘WOKE CAPITALISM’
KEVIN O'LEARY: When you're Disney or you're a beer company or you're Target, you have customers of every kind. Republicans, Democrats, gender-specific or gender-neutral. It doesn't matter. You want to sell everybody everything all of the time. When you get involved in partisan issues, you basically lose 50% of your constituency. Why you would do that when you're a consumer goods or service company, everybody's learning, makes absolutely no sense. The role of a business, a corporation in America for the last 200 years, has been to serve customers, their employees and their shareholders. Their role is not to educate society on the social issue of the day. They're learning that very quickly. And in the case of business, you can measure it by the second when they're public by the stock price. When you lose nine, 10, 11, $12 billion of market cap, you know that you've offended somebody and that person is your customer. That's bad business. Really bad business.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban looks on during the first half of his team's game against the Phoenix Suns at Footprint Center in Phoenix on Oct. 19, 2022. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Billionaire Cuban said companies embracing "woke" ideology is just "good business," pushing back against those who say it's adversely affecting their bottom lines.
In an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Sunday, the Dallas Mavericks owner spoke about the ongoing backlash against companies like Anheuser-Busch and the Target Corporation for promoting LGBTQ+ ideologies in their brands. Since promoting what many consider "woke" agendas, both companies have suffered massive losses worth billions of dollars.
While experts and industry insiders have suggested that invoking politics led to this downturn, Cuban insisted that embracing wokeness is a positive trait.
"There is a reason almost all the top 10 market cap companies in the U.S. can be considered ‘woke.’ It’s good business," he said.
Cuban explained, "Most CEOs have enough experience to know to just wait out the news cycle until they go to the next one."
Fox News' Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.