David Hopkinson, the president and COO of MSG Sports, said the company is considering selling a minority stake in the New York Knicks and New York Rangers.
He said MSG has no plans to sell the teams themselves but “we would certainly not rule out selling a minority stake in the Knicks or the Rangers,” according to The Athletic's Mike Vorkunov.
“There’s changes in the ecosystem. The NBA has recently allowed for private equity to come into the marketplace, as well as sovereign wealth funds. So we’ve got new pools of capital available,” David Hopkinson said.
MSG is showing a newfound willingness to publicly discuss selling off a portion to the team, after James Dolan said in October he wouldn't rule out selling a minority stake in either the Knicks or Rangers. Dolan runs both MSG companies and the teams, and both him and Hopkinson are adamant they they have no plans to sell control of either team.
“This is first movement we've seen from MSG about selling a piece of the Knicks or Rangers. James Dolan has always been adamant that he'd never sell control of the teams — he reiterated it last month — but now MSG is open to sell a portion of the team, with valuations skyrocketing,” Vorkunov wrote on Tuesday.
The New York Knicks are currently valued at $6.1 billion, the second-most valuable NBA franchise, according to Forbes, while the Rangers are the most valuable team in the National Hockey League at $2.2 billion.
Valuations have skyrocketed across the sports world; the Phoenix Suns were just sold at a $4 billion valuation as “more and more money enters the league.”
Simultaneously, MSG is trying to cut costs and is actively undergoing financial restructuring. After laying off employees across its companies last year, it announced it would explore selling off a majority share in the TAO Group.
Selling portions of the Knicks and Rangers would help the company with large cash infusions, per Vorkunov, and it seems as though that might be just the tonic for MSG Sports.
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