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James Dolan, Executive Chairman and CEO of Madison Square Garden Sports and Madison Square Garden Entertainment, has reportedly voiced his disapproval to the NBA’s Board of Governors over a number of financial issues, according to a source and reported by the New York Daily News.
The crux of Dolan’s frustrations lies within the rising costs of the league’s strategy to expand its influence over the longer term. The New York Daily News specifically mentioned the WNBA, Basketball Africa League, the G-League and the In-Season Tournament as currently unprofitable projects that have resulted in an operating budget almost 8% higher than the previous league year.
Another interesting tidbit from the piece is where Dolan contends that the NBA’s teams don’t receive the same information that the league’s audit committee does, yet are asked to make decisions to approve new budgets.
Ultimately, Dolan’s Protecting…Yep, Dolan
Dolan oversees iconic New York sports franchises including the NBA’s New York Knicks and NHL’s New York Rangers. It’s important to know where his career began to know how and why he’s taken the position he has now.
Dolan’s career began in the 1970s at Cablevision, a company founded by his father Charles Dolan. He held various executive positions before becoming CEO of Cablevision in 1995, a role he maintained until the company’s sale in 2016.
His leadership style and decision-making have always been polarizing, especially when pertaining to the Knicks. His latest spat with the NBA comes just two months after his last, when he blasted the league’s new media deal. The Sports Business Journal wrote about the email he sent the Board of Governors then:
“The email follows a previous scathing letter sent roughly 60 days ago, when the BOG was about to ratify the league’s new $77B media rights deal with ESPN, NBCU and Amazon. That time, Dolan accused the league of arbitrarily pocketing $6B of the $77B and predicted the deal would lead to the ultimate ruination of RSNs. His real issue, sources said, was that revenue sharing would financially damage a large market team like his Knicks.”
Read that last part again. The privileged large market with all of the built-in advantages doesn’t want to share revenue with the smaller markets who have to play at a competitive disadvantage due to circumstances out of their control.
Dolan’s WNBA Stance Prove His True Colors Are Green
It feels like an eon ago, but Dolan’s Madison Square Garden Company owned the New York Liberty less than seven years ago.
For those who’ve forgotten their history, Dolan decided to hire Isiah Thomas as Liberty president in 2015, even though he was involved in a sexual harassment lawsuit that saw the plaintiff Anucha Browne Sanders awarded $11.6 million back in 2007. Was it a basketball play or a let’s drum up interest and make money play? You decide.
When Dolan and company decided to sell the Liberty, he went out of his way to thank…one person by name…it was Thomas.
Flash forward to 2024, where the WNBA is setting attendance and viewership records as a league clearly on an upward trajectory and here’s Dolan, throwing shade at the league in his email rant. On top of that, SBJ sources noted that “It is also clear, they said, that Dolan has an axe to grind, having been the only team to vote against the league’s new media rights deal and also even the only one to vote against Toronto (and his adversary Larry Tanenbaum, chairperson of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment) receiving a WNBA expansion team.”
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