The Dolan family made its money — the money used to purchase the Knicks and Madison Square Garden — because Charles Dolan founded Cablevision, one of the nation’s largest cable television companies. The Knicks are owned by the Cablevision spin-off Madison Square Garden Company (MSG), where James Dolan is the CEO. That company spun off Sphere Entertainment, which owns the MSG Network, on which New York Knicks games are broadcast locally. Safe to say, Dolan is invested in the success of cable and the MSG Network.
That is the background to understand why Dolan is reportedly opposing the NBA’s operating budget for the coming season, something he announced to the other owners in a letter, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
In a letter sent to the NBA’s Board of Governors and obtained by ESPN, Knicks owner James Dolan continues to take issue with the league office and tells teams that he’ll vote no on the league’s proposed operating budget for 2024-2025 and the election of a new BOG chair. Dolan… pic.twitter.com/DJvuLS7Mdh
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 9, 2024
This will be Dolan’s latest hollow protest vote, the Knicks were reportedly the lone no vote on the massive new national television broadcast deal approved in July and will kick in for the 2025-26 season (not the coming one, but a year from now).
That new television deal pushes forward the league’s strategy of leaning into streaming its games, with some games exclusively on NBC’s Peacock and Amazon Prime, and it follows a strategy the NFL and MLB are using as well. As consumers are cutting the cord and moving away from traditional cable, sports leagues are moving to meet viewers where they are.
The television deal is not Dolan’s only complaint, he also is not a fan of the league’s revenue sharing plan, which taps some of the team’s local broadcast and sponsorship revenue. Dolan shared his view of the NBA world in a letter to the other owners opposing the new television deal that ESPN’s Wojnarowski obtained in July (when the broadcast plan was approved).
“The NBA has made the move to an NFL model — deemphasizing and depowering the local market. Soon, your only revenue concern will be the sale of tickets and what color next year’s jersey will be. Don’t worry, because due to revenue pooling, you are guaranteed to be neither a success nor a failure. Of course, to get there, the league must take down the successful franchises and redistribute to the less successful. This new media deal goes a long way to accomplishing that goal.”
Dolan sees the financial advantages he had as the owner of the team in the nation’s largest media market slipping away, as are the cable-based regional sports networks carrying NBA games (although that will continue this season with the league reaching a deal with Diamond Sports, which is in bankruptcy). The other owners did not share his view. Dolan stepped down from several Board of Governors committees last November and reportedly has not attended any BOG events since, sending MSG general counsel Jamaal Lesane as his proxy.
The Knicks are also in the process of suing the Toronto Raptors over the alleged theft of intellectual property in an unusual case, with New York saying it needed to go to court because NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is not a neutral arbitrator.
The irony is that for a couple of decades the Knicks — often because of Dolan’s decisions — didn’t use their big market advantages well and the team floundered. Now, as the league moves toward streaming and revenue sharing, Dolan has handed basketball decision-making over to former agent Leon Rose, who has turned the Knicks into a title contender behind Jalen Brunson.
