Knicks owner James Dolan reportedly sends letter saying he will vote against league’s budget

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…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/knicks-owner-james-dolan-reportedly-131317492.html

Author : NBC Sports

Publish date : 2024-09-10 13:13:17

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