Knicks’ James Dolan Lone Owner To Vote ‘No’ On New NBA Media Rights Deal

July 18, 2024

NBA owners voted 29-to-1 in favor of the new media rights deal, with New York Knicks owner James Dolan being the lone member to vote “no,” per Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal.

The league reportedly has agreed to a new broadcasting and streaming deal, worth $76 billion over 11 years, with holdover ESPN/ABC and newcomers NBC and Amazon. Per Friend, Warner Bros. Discovery intends to the Amazon portion of the package. WBD owns current league broadcast partner TNT.

Dolan recently sent an email to the league office expressing concerns that the flux of national games under the new media rights agreement would negatively impact local TV revenue.

“Well, my response is that we try to keep these issues in the family,” commissioner Adam Silver said of Dolan’s email. “Yes, Jim Dolan did send a letter to his partner teams and to the league office, and that was discussed certainly at our meetings. But I don’t think it’s appropriate to get into the specifics about what was discussed.”

As for Warner Bros. Discovery, matching the Amazon offer does not necessarily mean TNT will still broadcast games beyond this season. The NBA could fight it.

“As recent as yesterday, WBD laid off 1,000 more employees — reportedly across its finance, business affairs, and production departments, as well as less than 10 employees from Max — after similarly cutting back on staff in both 2022 and 2023,” Friend wrote. “The NBA, sources said, has watched knowingly from a distance, and has had a difficult time getting on board with a company in WBD that is worth roughly $17B and reportedly $40B in debt.”

Along with Amazon, NBC is expected to stream games via its Peacock app as part of the new agreement.

“There’s a large portion of our fan base that no longer subscribes to [cable and satellite],” Silver said. “We want to continue serving them. At the same time, streaming has become predominant. We wanted to make sure that going forward our games would be accessible to our fans through various streaming services.”