James Dolan writes critical letter on NBA’s media rights deal

Last week, the NBA finalized its media rights agreement with Disney, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime Video for the 2025-26 season. But not everyone is overly thrilled about the deal, which one NBA owner made perfectly clear in a letter to the NBA’s Board of Governors.

New York Knicks owner James Dolan has been a longstanding critic of the league pushing to make the NBA seen much more on national broadcasts instead of leaning on the Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) that have pushed the league for decades.

Last November, Dolan resigned from his positions on the league’s advisory finance and media committees, particularly due to the league’s revenue-sharing policies.

Dolan made these complaints known publically in his letter on Monday night, which was obtained by ESPN, again criticizing how he believes the league is punishing the “successful franchises” with revenue sharing.

“The NBA has made the move to an NFL model — deemphasizing and depowering the local market,” Dolan wrote in the letter. “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.”

In terms of the media rights deal in particular, Dolan offered complaints about the increase in nationally televised games potentially making it so team sponsors are “no longer protected”.

“These changes drastically increase the challenges associated with attracting and renewing vital sponsorship revenue by creating a particularly unfriendly environment for member team sponsors,” wrote Dolan. The inclusion of streaming partners in the proposal (Amazon Prime Video, Peacock) allows fans in all NBA markets to bypass their RSN to watch certain games in their local market. The proposal offers no local protections for RSNs.”

At the end of his letter, Dolan appeared to urge other NBA owners to speak out against the new media rights deal, sighting how he believes “pride of ownership” is being sacrificed.

“We trust that our concerns are shared by many of our counterparts across the league, each of whom will be similarly impacted. The league will say that it does not matter because your franchise value will continue to rise; that contemplates you will eventually sell… Once again, pride of ownership is what is sacrificed. We are well on our way to becoming a one-size-fits-all, characterless organization. Just remember we did this on the backs of owners like Jerry Buss.”

Increased live broadcasts on streaming platforms are certainly not exclusive to the NBA. The NFL has also taken every opportunity to partner with these same streaming platforms.

The harsh reality of the matter is that every major sports league is moving away from RSNs, whether Dolan or any other NBA owners like it or not.

[ESPN]