The Oligarch of Classical Music

IN THE SPRING OF 2008, James Dolan, the CEO of Cable­vi­sion, called an employ­ee for advice. Dolan was nev­er a man who did things by halves. When he dis­cov­ered a pas­sion for yacht­ing, he was not con­tent mere­ly to sail for plea­sure, but instead put him­self through the gru­el­ing reg­i­men of com­pet­i­tive rac­ing. Now he was dri­ven by a dif­fer­ent ambi­tion — to make a suc­cess of his rock band, JD & The Straight Shot, for which he sang lead vocals, played gui­tar and wrote songs. Dolan believed the time had come for pro­fes­sion­al man­age­ment, and he asked his employ­ee, who was knowl­edge­able about such mat­ters, to rec­om­mend some­one. “Irv­ing Azoff,” the employ­ee told his boss, to which Dolan unex­pect­ed­ly replied, “Who is Irv­ing Azoff?”
     Cable­vi­sion owned Madi­son Square Gar­den, so it was sur­pris­ing that Dolan didn’t know the name of per­haps the most pow­er­ful tal­ent man­ag­er in the music busi­ness. He got a first­hand answer to his ques­tion a few weeks lat­er, when he and Azoff were for­mal­ly intro­duced in New York. The Eagles, a band Azoff had man­aged since the 1970s, came to the Gar­den, and MSG Entertainment’s then-pres­i­dent Jay Mar­ciano, who had once report­ed to Azoff, set up a meet­ing between his for­mer boss and his present one. If Dolan’s orig­i­nal pur­pose in meet­ing Azoff had con­cerned his band, the dis­cus­sion soon turned into some­thing big­ger. “Jay intro­duced me to Irv­ing,” Dolan recalls in a rare inter­view with Bill­board, “and Irv­ing did even­tu­al­ly for a while take us on” as man­ag­er of JD & The Straight Shot. But, Dolan says, “Irv­ing and I were more inter­est­ed in our busi­ness rela­tion­ship.”
     The Dolan-Azoff busi­ness rela­tion­ship has not only had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on their respec­tive com­pa­nies, but could change the shape of the post-pan­dem­ic live-music indus­try. Five years after the two men were for­mal­ly intro­duced, MSG paid $125 mil­lion for 50% of Azoff’s Los Ange­les-based artist man­age­ment com­pa­ny, which was renamed Azoff MSG Enter­tain­ment and billed as a joint ven­ture. Azoff con­tin­ued to call his own shots, how­ev­er, while MSG pro­vid­ed him with $63.5 mil­lion in addi­tion­al financ­ing, which he used to diver­si­fy, mak­ing his com­pa­ny less depen­dent on live music. He formed an are­na-devel­op­ment part­ner­ship called Oak View Group, which has under­tak­en con­struc­tion projects for venues in the Unit­ed States and Europe — all to be used for sports as well as con­certs. In the mean­time, Dolan unex­pect­ed­ly began tak­ing MSG in the oppo­site direc­tion, pour­ing his company’s resources into con­cert are­nas free of sports. With that deci­sion, Dolan today stands alone against the dual-pur­pose venue mod­el embraced, it seems, by every­one else — Azoff includ­ed.
     Yet it was Azoff who first nudged Dolan in that sin­gu­lar direc­tion by urg­ing him to buy The Forum in Ingle­wood, Calif. Once the home of the Los Ange­les Lak­ers, the build­ing was remod­eled by MSG as the only are­na-size con­cert venue in the Unit­ed States lack­ing a sports fran­chise. With its warm inte­ri­or and superla­tive acoustics, the mod­ern­ized 17,800-seat Forum became one of the best-attend­ed enter­tain­ment venues in the world, gross­ing $491.3 mil­lion and sell­ing 5.4 mil­lion tick­ets for 506 shows since it reopened in Jan­u­ary 2014, accord­ing to Bill­board Boxs­core. The Eagles chris­tened the ren­o­vat­ed are­na with a six-night run. The warmup act — the first group to per­form at the new Forum — was Dolan’s band, JD & The Straight Shot.
     But amid the suc­cess, trou­ble was brew­ing. MSG had leased land in Ingle­wood for over­flow park­ing for The Forum. The lot was sel­dom used because it was an incon­ve­nient mile or so from the venue, and in 2017, when the may­or of Ingle­wood asked MSG to ter­mi­nate its lease so the land could be sold to an undis­closed buy­er, MSG com­plied. The buy­er turned out to be Steve Ballmer, the for­mer CEO of Microsoft and bil­lion­aire own­er of the Los Ange­les Clip­pers, who planned to build an are­na com­plex for the NBA team that could also be used for con­certs. Dolan was furi­ous, and MSG sued the city and the may­or per­son­al­ly. In his depo­si­tion for what was called “the Clip­pers law­suit,” Azoff admit­ted that Dolan had had mis­giv­ings about giv­ing up the land, but had gone along with the lease ter­mi­na­tion at Azoff’s urg­ing. “It was a mess,” said Azoff.
     The mess came to an end in the spring when Ballmer took The Forum off MSG’s hands for $400 mil­lion. The sale came just as MSG, in the face of the world­wide pan­dem­ic, tem­porar­i­ly shut­tered all of its venues — includ­ing Madi­son Square Gar­den and the Chica­go The­atre, which MSG owns, and New York’s Bea­con The­atre and Radio City Music Hall, which MSG leas­es. The annu­al Christ­mas Spec­tac­u­lar at Radio City, fea­tur­ing the Rock­ettes, was can­celed for the first time since the show debuted in 1933. The New York Knicks and New York Rangers, who play at the Gar­den, are sit­ting out the cur­rent sea­son. While Dolan insist­ed on pay­ing all his employ­ees through May 3, the harsh eco­nom­ic real­i­ties of the coro­n­avirus cri­sis could not be avoid­ed for long. On Aug. 4, MSG Enter­tain­ment dis­closed plans to lay off 350 peo­ple, rough­ly one-third of its cor­po­rate work­force, while MSG Sports will cut anoth­er 50 jobs, about 15% of its staff. Though the sale of The Forum wasn’t con­nect­ed to the pan­dem­ic, it’s not a bad time to be divest­ing a per­for­mance are­na for a siz­able prof­it.
     Except the prof­it is not quite as siz­able as it might have been. Once MSG’s invest­ment in The Forum — $120 mil­lion, includ­ing the orig­i­nal pur­chase price of $23.5 mil­lion — is sub­tract­ed, as well as tax­es and oth­er lia­bil­i­ties, the com­pa­ny comes out ahead by about $138 mil­lion. MSG’s net gain could have been high­er, and the rea­son it wasn’t is hid­ing in plain sight in MSG Entertainment’s Form 8‑K, filed on May 1 with the U.S. Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion (SEC). Azoff, who nev­er invest­ed a dime of his own mon­ey in The Forum and who admit­ted in his depo­si­tion in the Clip­pers law­suit that he had blun­dered bad­ly by encour­ag­ing MSG to ter­mi­nate its land lease, is nev­er­the­less pock­et­ing $48.7 mil­lion from the sale to Ballmer. (Azoff declined to be inter­viewed for this arti­cle.)
     Azoff’s take, which Dolan defends as a sweat-equi­ty pay­ment, enforces a wide­ly held view that Dolan is enthralled with him and will­ing to give him any­thing he wants. No ques­tion, he speaks of Azoff with gush­ing admi­ra­tion, using such phras­es as “the expert” and even “one of the true giants of the indus­try.” He also calls Azoff “one of my clos­est friends.” But viewed anoth­er way, Dolan’s extrav­a­gant regard for Azoff’s busi­ness acu­men illus­trates just how seri­ous­ly Dolan is com­mit­ted to his vision of are­na-size venues in the ser­vice of music. His strate­gic diver­gence with Azoff in that sense led him, in Decem­ber 2018, to sell back — for the orig­i­nal pur­chase price of $125 mil­lion and repay­ment of the loans — his 50% inter­est in Azoff MSG Enter­tain­ment, which is now called The Azoff Com­pa­ny. Fur­ther evi­dence of Dolan’s com­mit­ment to live music came in April, when the Madi­son Square Gar­den Com­pa­ny was split into two pub­lic com­pa­nies, one for sports and the oth­er for enter­tain­ment. Dolan appoint­ed some­one oth­er than him­self to be CEO of the sports enti­ty.
     Dolan wants noth­ing less than to rev­o­lu­tion­ize live enter­tain­ment with immer­sive media tech­nol­o­gy, and to that end, he has a new West Coast venue in the off­ing, not in Los Ange­les but Las Vegas: a 34-sto­ry colos­sus called the MSG Sphere. It will house the world’s largest LED screen — the size of three foot­ball fields, arc­ing around the audi­ence plan­e­tar­i­um-style and cre­at­ing an expe­ri­ence akin to vir­tu­al real­i­ty with­out the gog­gles. The Sphere, which is being built just off the Strip in part­ner­ship with the Las Vegas Sands Corp., was sup­posed to have opened in 2021, but the pan­dem­ic has delayed con­struc­tion and the costs keep ris­ing.
     Dolan is unde­terred. In fact, the Sphere in Vegas is being built as a pro­to­type, to be fol­lowed, if Dolan has his way, by anoth­er Sphere of com­pa­ra­ble size in Lon­don and small­er ver­sions around the globe. With 17,500 front-fac­ing seats, the MSG Sphere is by design unsuit­ed for sport­ing events, and in order to gain an ade­quate return on invest­ment, Dolan will have to attract bank­able musi­cians eager to take full advan­tage of the tech­nol­o­gy. For that, he says he’s count­ing on assis­tance from Azoff, who remains a well-paid con­sul­tant to MSG Enter­tain­ment. The indus­try is watch­ing, with a mix­ture of fas­ci­na­tion and skep­ti­cism, to see if Dolan can pull it off.
     “Jim wants to rein­vent the live-enter­tain­ment expe­ri­ence,” notes a for­mer MSG exec­u­tive. “He couldn’t care less about sports.” That entails more than a lit­tle irony because the pub­lic and the New York tabloids per­sist in see­ing Dolan through the lens of MSG’s sports fran­chis­es, the Knicks in par­tic­u­lar. His pas­sion is music — a pas­sion inflamed fur­ther, thanks to Azoff, by his get­ting to tour and per­form with some of his idols. Dolan has lived the life of a work­ing musi­cian, and his long absences on the road with his band have been well not­ed, some­times with wry amuse­ment, by his employ­ees. Says a for­mer col­league, “It would be eas­i­er for all of us to accept if he was just a week­end war­rior and mak­ing music was just a hob­by.” But it isn’t. Those who do not under­stand that do not under­stand James Dolan.

DOLAN sel­dom speaks to the media, but he gave three inter­views via Zoom for this arti­cle. In late March, he con­tract­ed a mild form of the coro­n­avirus, and on the day of the first inter­view, he test­ed neg­a­tive and was able to reunite with his sons, whom he had not seen in over a month. For the sec­ond and third inter­views, Dolan appeared before a vir­tu­al back­ground image — an artist’s dra­mat­ic ren­der­ing of the as-yet-unfin­ished MSG Sphere in Las Vegas. An ex-smok­er, he took short drags on a vape pen. Though ini­tial­ly guard­ed and a bit testy — Dolan is reput­ed to have a hair-trig­ger tem­per — he grew increas­ing­ly gra­cious, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the sub­ject turned to his music.
     “There’s a lot of mis­con­cep­tion out there about me,” he says. “But if you want to know who I am as a per­son, it’s all in that music. I pour myself com­plete­ly into those lyrics and into those songs.”
     Dolan is a com­pact five feet six, with a gruff bari­tone voice, a full head of wavy brown hair and a trimmed goa­tee. He is the third of six chil­dren born to Charles Dolan, the self-made bil­lion­aire who found­ed Cable­vi­sion. Twice divorced at age 65, James Dolan is father to six sons. He is one of the most rec­og­niz­able chief exec­u­tives in New York, but for all the wrong rea­sons. Dolan is a famil­iar fig­ure to long-suf­fer­ing Knicks fans, who see him sit­ting court­side at home games at the Gar­den, often with his arms fold­ed and his face wear­ing a frown. The Knicks haven’t made the NBA finals for the past two decades, and sports writ­ers treat him with the same hos­til­i­ty they once had reserved for New York Yan­kees own­er George Stein­bren­ner, who was sim­i­lar­ly cas­ti­gat­ed — until the Yan­kees start­ed win­ning.
     The attacks on Dolan for the Knicks’ loss­es occa­sion­al­ly bor­der on the absurd. In the tabloids, he has been con­demned as a “sports vil­lain”; his stew­ard­ship of the Knicks has been described as “putrid” and “sab­o­tage”; a New York Dai­ly News sports writer encour­aged him to “con­sid­er run­ning for pres­i­dent of Rus­sia.” He has been called “New York’s MVP” — most vil­i­fied per­son. Dolan has had heck­lers at his band’s con­certs demand­ing that he sell the team.
     One could almost take pity on him — except that, at times, Dolan seems to go out of his way to court crit­i­cism. Two years ago, JD & The Straight Shot released “I Should’ve Known,” a song Dolan wrote to rebuke his for­mer friend Har­vey Wein­stein for sex­u­al mis­con­duct. (“I should’ve thrown myself across his tracks/Stopped him from these vile attacks.”) The song was pil­lo­ried because in 2007, Dolan was forced to pay a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar legal set­tle­ment for fir­ing a woman employ­ee after she accused Knicks gen­er­al man­ag­er Isi­ah Thomas of sex­u­al harass­ment. The band’s 2015 album Bal­ly­hoo! includes “Under That Hood,” a Dolan-penned protest song about the shoot­ing death of unarmed Black teenag­er Trayvon Mar­tin. In June, Dolan faced intense crit­i­cism for not sim­i­lar­ly rais­ing his voice in protest when the Knicks fran­chise was one of only two in the NBA to stay silent about the killing of George Floyd.
     There’s also the 2011 song Dolan wrote called “Fix the Knicks,” a nod to the carp­ing over his team’s fail­ure to recap­ture its past glo­ry. (“Fix the Knicks and make them shine/Get ’em to win like it’s ’69.”) It didn’t go over well. He has tried to shield his band from the vit­ri­ol of irate sports and music fans, who pro­pose that Dolan, him­self a bil­lion­aire, has sim­ply bought his way into the lime­light. Erin Slaver, a vio­lin­ist-singer who has record­ed and toured with the band, says she was dis­heart­ened by crit­ics who she believes “didn’t pay any atten­tion” to the music and were “just being hate­ful to be hate­ful.” Between 2005 and 2019, JD & The Straight Shot, which bills itself as an Amer­i­cana band, released sev­en albums and got some pos­i­tive reviews. All­Mu­sic Guide award­ed three and a half stars to 2008’s Right on Time, prais­ing the “earthy, down-home bar band” aes­thet­ic that Dolan seems to be striv­ing for. JD & The Straight Shot’s songs are most­ly orig­i­nals, often com­posed in the stu­dio and cred­it­ed to mul­ti­ple band mem­bers. The group has an uncom­mon pen­chant for minor modes — on its 2019 album The Great Divide, only two of the 11 tracks are in major keys, and one of those is an All­man Broth­ers Band cov­er. “We’re all just cyn­i­cal musi­cians,” says Slaver, laugh­ing.
     Dolan car­ries a jour­nal with him to jot down ideas for song lyrics. His lead vocals are steady and depend­able. For 15 years, he has been tak­ing voice lessons with fabled coach Don Lawrence, whose clients include Mick Jag­ger, Axl Rose and Lady Gaga. Lawrence has called Dolan “damn good” and his hard­est-work­ing stu­dent. Dolan still has had far less musi­cal train­ing than Slaver and oth­er Straight Shot band mem­bers, who include gui­tarist Marc Cope­ly and bassist Byron House, but Slaver says it was nev­er an issue. “Jim’s ear is pret­ty detailed,” she says. “It’s amaz­ing what he would pick out.”
     Dolan loves to be onstage, where he exudes hap­pi­ness and dis­plays a self-dep­re­cat­ing sense of humor. He often per­forms in a fedo­ra, although on one tour, when he sang the title track from the Bal­ly­hoo! album, he swapped it for a car­ni­val barker’s top hat. His song “Governor’s Blues,” a jab at for­mer New Jer­sey Gov. Chris Christie, includes a kazoo solo. Dolan’s zest for per­form­ing is evi­dent in his tour­ing sched­ule. In 2017, his busiest year on the road, JD & The Straight Shot per­formed some 50 con­certs through­out the Unit­ed States and Europe.
     Dur­ing the band’s first decade, Dolan clear­ly got a kick out of open­ing for famous acts and per­form­ing for large crowds. An exper­i­ment to see if his group could draw on its own didn’t work so well. Last year, Sir­iusXM spon­sored a 20-city tour that fea­tured JD & The Straight Shot along­side singer-song­writ­ers Matt Cos­ta and Matt Hartke. It proved a dis­ap­point­ment for all three acts.
     “Sir­ius was play­ing the hell out of our music,” recalls Dolan. “And we’d still end up with 30 peo­ple in the room. That was a good night some­times.”
     Dolan is think­ing about pos­si­bly start­ing a new band with his sec­ond-eldest son, Aidan, an accom­plished gui­tarist who shares his own musi­cal tastes and who for a time was a mem­ber of JD & The Straight Shot. (Dolan’s eldest son, Char­lie, is the bassist for TAUK, a pro­gres­sive rock fusion band.) Amid the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, Dolan is weigh­ing his options. With or with­out The Straight Shot, it’s a safe bet he will find an out­let for his need to make music.

EVEN BEFORE DOLAN formed his band, MSG employ­ees knew they had a musi­cian for a boss. As recount­ed in a sto­ry in Sports Illus­trat­ed, in 2000, Dolan put togeth­er a makeshift band at a cor­po­rate retreat in Flori­da and ser­e­nad­ed the Garden’s then-pres­i­dent Dave Check­etts with a “Born to Run” par­o­dy: “Dave, this com­pa­ny rips the bones from your back/It’s a death trap, it’s a sui­cide rap/You should have got out while you were young/Because I have some­thing to tell you/I’m Chuck Dolan’s son!”
     Chuck Dolan’s son. Those three words defined James Dolan for his first decade at the helm of Cable­vi­sion. Charles Dolan, who at 93 still lives next door to James in Oys­ter Bay, Long Island, is some­thing of a leg­end in the cable TV indus­try. A col­lege dropout from Cleve­land, Charles moved to New York in 1952 and became one of the first to see the poten­tial of cable TV, then a rel­a­tive­ly new tech­nol­o­gy. In 1965, he was award­ed the fran­chise rights to wire Low­er Man­hat­tan and found­ed the net­work that became HBO, which he sold to Time Warn­er in 1973. That year, he also launched Cable­vi­sion with 1,500 cus­tomers on Long Island. By the mid-1990s, Cable­vi­sion had 3 mil­lion sub­scribers in 19 states. Charles was known for his out­ward gen­til­i­ty and inward deter­mi­na­tion. “Get­ting cable fran­chis­es is very hard,” says a fam­i­ly friend. “Chuck is very gra­cious and phil­an­thropic, but nobody should sug­gest he isn’t tough.”
     James, his youngest son, had musi­cal ambi­tions. At 15, he mowed lawns to raise the $200 he need­ed to buy a used Gib­son J‑50 gui­tar. Though his moth­er, Helen, who also is still liv­ing, played piano and cel­lo, his par­ents were “not very enthu­si­as­tic about my music when I was a teenag­er,” says Dolan. He took music cours­es at SUNY New Paltz but switched his major to com­mu­ni­ca­tions after con­sid­er­ing his prospects as a musi­cian.
     “I was tak­ing gui­tar lessons from a guy who was real­ly good,” recalls Dolan. “He also played ped­al steel and sang — all the things I want­ed to do. He was charg­ing me $5 for my gui­tar lessons. And I real­ized it was going to take me 10 years to get as good as this guy so I could give $5‑an-hour gui­tar lessons. I mean, that is the nature of the music busi­ness, isn’t it? You’re not reward­ed for your pro­fi­cien­cy like you are in oth­er indus­tries.”
     Dolan joined his father’s com­pa­ny three days after grad­u­a­tion and start­ed learn­ing the busi­ness from the ground up. He trimmed trees to clear the way for cables, sold sub­scrip­tions and knocked on the doors of dead­beat cus­tomers. Charles sent him to Cleve­land to man­age a fam­i­ly-owned sports radio sta­tion. Lit­tle by lit­tle, over 20 years, Charles groomed James to suc­ceed him as the head of the com­pa­ny. Why James and not his two old­er broth­ers or three younger sis­ters? Charles has explained his deci­sion exact­ly once, over 20 years ago, in an inter­view in the Long Island news­pa­per News­day: “Most­ly, it was because nobody else want­ed it,” he said.
     James was a hard work­er, but it became increas­ing­ly appar­ent that he was also an alco­holic and drug addict. In August 1993, a few months after his 38th birth­day, he hit bot­tom. Charles put his son on a plane and sent him to the Hazelden clin­ic in Min­neso­ta. Dolan is open about his past sub­stance abuse and says he has been clean and sober since his treat­ment there. He believes his recov­ery taught him to be true to him­self. His band’s name, The Straight Shot, is “sort of a ref­er­ence to drink­ing and hon­esty,” he says.
In 1995, James was pro­mot­ed to CEO of Cable­vi­sion. Charles was chair­man. No one doubt­ed who was in charge. Cable­vi­sion gave a news con­fer­ence in March 1997 to announce that it had bought out ITT’s major­i­ty own­er­ship of Madi­son Square Gar­den, which the two com­pa­nies had joint­ly pur­chased three years ear­li­er. Through­out the entire pre­sen­ta­tion, James sat mute. When a reporter for News­day tried to ques­tion him after­ward, he glanced ner­vous­ly at his father and mut­tered, “As Dad said…”
     Over­shad­owed by his father, James Dolan seemed to be look­ing for a way to dis­tin­guish him­self out­side the fam­i­ly busi­ness. His sis­ter Deb­o­rah had done pre­cise­ly that by becom­ing a cham­pi­on horse jumper. James had start­ed rac­ing yachts in the 1980s, and by the 1990s, he was com­pet­ing in regat­tas around the world, hav­ing assem­bled a topflight sail­ing crew. He want­ed to win, not mere­ly as a crew­man but as the skip­per, and he steered his own boat. The big win nev­er came. Dolan’s last race, from New­port, R.I., to Bermu­da on a yacht called Encore, was in 2002, after which he quit the sport. Three years lat­er, JD & The Straight Shot released its debut album, Noth­ing to Hide.
     The year proved to be a turn­ing point in his career. Cable­vi­sion had always been a fam­i­ly busi­ness and, more specif­i­cal­ly, Charles Dolan’s com­pa­ny. But James and the board were los­ing patience with Charles’ futur­is­tic pet project, Voom, which beamed high-def­i­n­i­tion TV pro­grams to sub­scribers via a satel­lite the com­pa­ny had launched in 2003 from Cape Canaver­al, Fla. The tech­nol­o­gy was sound; a four-star review in CNET rat­ed Voom supe­ri­or in pic­ture qual­i­ty com­pared with its larg­er com­peti­tors, Dish Net­work and DIRECTV. The prob­lem was the cost: In its first year, Voom burned through $660 mil­lion.
     By Decem­ber 2004, James was in a bind. With a pro­ject­ed loss of over $1 bil­lion and no end in sight, Voom no longer had the sup­port of the board or James him­self, and he had to break the news to his aston­ished father. In Jan­u­ary 2005, the board vot­ed to sell the satel­lite to EchoStar. Charles fought back — and lost. On April 30, Voom offi­cial­ly ceased oper­a­tions. The internecine strug­gle caused deep divi­sions and hurt feel­ings inside the Dolan fam­i­ly, but Charles nev­er pub­licly crit­i­cized his son. (Those wounds have long since healed. Dur­ing the third Zoom inter­view for this arti­cle, which was con­duct­ed from Dolan’s home, Charles made an unsched­uled appear­ance. James regard­ed him ador­ing­ly and said, “Every­thing I do that’s good is attrib­ut­able to him.”)
     While chal­leng­ing his father, James was wag­ing a sep­a­rate bat­tle against New York City May­or Michael Bloomberg. The New York Jets, whose home base was the New Jer­sey Mead­ow­lands, want­ed to build a sta­di­um on Manhattan’s West Side, only blocks from Madi­son Square Gar­den. Bloomberg laud­ed the project and offered to con­tribute $600 mil­lion of tax­pay­er mon­ey. He believed the new sta­di­um would pay off in jobs, tax rev­enue and urban devel­op­ment, and give the city a shot at host­ing the 2012 Sum­mer Olympics. Dolan was hell-bent on stop­ping con­struc­tion. He bankrolled an anti-sta­di­um civic group and pumped upward of $12 mil­lion into TV and radio attack ads, accus­ing Bloomberg of waste­ful spend­ing.
     Dolan pre­vailed. In June 2005, only weeks after his deci­sive win in the board­room show­down with his father, the West Side sta­di­um was pro­nounced dead.
     The stress of the year was tremen­dous, and per­haps it was no coin­ci­dence that in Octo­ber, Dolan under­went heart bypass surgery. But he was his own man at last. His then-friend Har­vey Wein­stein, in an inter­view for New York Mag­a­zine, called the dou­ble vic­to­ry “Jim’s defin­ing moment” and his “com­ing-out par­ty.” Dolan would emerge from his father’s shad­ow once and for all a decade lat­er, when he orches­trat­ed the $17 bil­lion sale of Cable­vi­sion to Euro­pean tele­com giant Altice, shed­ding the family’s core busi­ness. James Dolan was no longer sim­ply Chuck Dolan’s son.
     Since then, two oth­er words — “Knicks own­er” — have, unfor­tu­nate­ly, come to define him neg­a­tive­ly in the eyes of the pub­lic. Often over­looked is that despite the team’s los­ing streak, the Knicks, which Cable­vi­sion bought in 1997 for $300 mil­lion, has a mar­ket val­u­a­tion (as cal­cu­lat­ed by Forbes) of $4.6 bil­lion, the high­est in the NBA.
     Indeed, until the pan­dem­ic, Knicks fans reli­ably filled the Gar­den, dis­grun­tled or not. A key rea­son was Dolan’s three-year, bil­lion-dol­lar ren­o­va­tion of the venue that rebuilt much of the inte­ri­or by the time it was com­plet­ed in 2013. The cost­ly project, which the com­pa­ny dubbed “the Trans­for­ma­tion,” was greet­ed with appre­hen­sion, and Dolan has nev­er received due cred­it for ignor­ing the naysay­ers and push­ing ahead. His deci­sion to pull the plug on Voom also looks good in ret­ro­spect. And con­sid­er­ing the decline of cable in recent years, his sale of Cable­vi­sion to Altice could hard­ly have been bet­ter timed.
     The well-con­sid­ered crit­i­cism of James Dolan as the head of a large pub­lic com­pa­ny is his tem­pera­ment. He can erupt with anger, and he scares peo­ple who work for him. He pays his exec­u­tives well but burns through them. Madi­son Square Gar­den had three CEOs — Hank Rat­ner, Tad Smith and David “Doc” O’Connor — between 2009 and 2017, after which Dolan assumed the CEO title along with his exist­ing title of exec­u­tive chair­man. For­mer­ly a man­ag­ing part­ner of Cre­ative Artists Agency, O’Connor was con­cerned about what he per­ceived as a “cul­ture of fear” inside MSG, a descrip­tion he used at town hall meet­ings for employ­ees. (A defend­er of Dolan says, “Jim’s a very smart man, and when he says, ‘I want X, Y and Z,’ and you bring him A, B and C, there’s a line of frus­tra­tion. And some­times, unfor­tu­nate­ly, you do get to that point of break­ing because no one’s lis­ten­ing. It’s like, ‘Hey, class! Pay atten­tion!’ That’s the way Jim talks.”)
     Dolan express­es no regrets in hav­ing tak­en over the stew­ard­ship of the com­pa­ny his father found­ed, though he acknowl­edges that had he stuck with major­ing in music at SUNY New Paltz in the ’70s, “it would have been a very dif­fer­ent life for me.” Some observers, while rec­og­niz­ing that he has proven him­self capa­ble, ques­tion his deci­sion. “I nev­er saw an unhap­pi­er exec­u­tive than Jim Dolan,” says a for­mer Cable­vi­sion board mem­ber. “He’s hap­py when he’s play­ing music. His sis­ter Deb­bie fol­lowed her pas­sion. I nev­er could under­stand why Jim­my didn’t sim­ply fol­low his.”

TWO THOUSAND AND FIVE was also a mile­stone year for the man who would help give Dolan his first real taste of musi­cal star­dom: Irv­ing Azoff. Azoff had been a big deal in the music indus­try since the 1970s, when Rolling Stone dubbed him “rock’s most influ­en­tial mega-man­ag­er.” (The mag­a­zine also called the five-foot-three Azoff “Big Shorty.”) He had start­ed Front Line Man­age­ment with the Eagles, Joe Walsh, Dan Fogel­berg and REO Speed­wag­on, and picked up numer­ous oth­er star clients before tak­ing a detour to run MCA Records and then Giant Records for Warn­er Music Group. By 2001, he had returned to tal­ent man­age­ment full time, with the goal of vast­ly enlarg­ing his artist ros­ter by buy­ing up oth­er man­age­ment com­pa­nies. Four years lat­er, Front Line received a $200 mil­lion infu­sion from pri­vate equi­ty firm Thomas H. Lee Part­ners, giv­ing Azoff the cap­i­tal he need­ed to cre­ate his man­age­ment pow­er­house.
     Azoff has a nasal tenor voice that can rise to a full-throat­ed roar when his anger is aroused, although in con­trast to Dolan, his tantrums are often cal­cu­lat­ed. His rep­u­ta­tion for bend­ing the truth — some­thing he has more than once admit­ted — has earned him the nick­name Swerv­ing Irv­ing. Azoff is a strate­gist, a deal-mak­er gift­ed with a remark­able mem­o­ry; a man who can either charm or ter­ri­fy those with whom he does busi­ness. He has the bear­ing of some­one less inter­est­ed in the art of music than the art of con­quest. He once made a T‑shirt for his employ­ees embla­zoned with the words “He who dies with the most toys wins” on the front. The back read, “Irv­ing wins!”
     Azoff is now 72, but as a younger man, he was noto­ri­ous for his rock-star antics. He was kicked off air­planes for start­ing food fights and once bought Joe Walsh a chain saw to carve a pas­sage­way between adjoin­ing hotel rooms. On anoth­er occa­sion, he and a client were watch­ing John­ny Car­son and decid­ed the talk show host looked thirsty; they poured water down the back of the TV set until it explod­ed.
     From his ear­li­est days in the busi­ness, Azoff has deliv­ered for his artists, who appear to adore him. Giv­en a choice between hav­ing a fan or a killer for a man­ag­er, most per­form­ers would choose the lat­ter. Dolan is more of a fan; he speaks of his musi­cal idols — Eric Clap­ton, the All­man Broth­ers Band and Lit­tle Feat, among oth­ers — with rev­er­ence.
     By the time Azoff and Dolan were for­mal­ly intro­duced in May 2008, Front Line was man­ag­ing over 100 acts, includ­ing the Eagles, Van Halen, Christi­na Aguil­era, Neil Dia­mond, Fleet­wood Mac and Steely Dan. Dolan was imme­di­ate­ly tak­en with Azoff. “Jim loved every­thing Irv­ing could bring him,” recalls a music exec­u­tive with ties to both men. “Irv­ing could intro­duce him to his idols. Despite his pro­file in New York City, Jim didn’t have deep rela­tion­ships with the music com­mu­ni­ty, and he want­ed that.” Less than a month lat­er, MSG bought 10% of Front Line. MSG sold its shares for a prof­it that same year to Tick­et­mas­ter, the world’s largest tick­et­ing com­pa­ny, which bought a con­trol­ling inter­est in Front Line. Then, in Feb­ru­ary 2009, Tick­et­mas­ter merged with Live Nation, the world’s largest con­cert pro­mot­er, cre­at­ing the behe­moth Live Nation Enter­tain­ment. Azoff was made chair­man of the com­bined com­pa­ny.
     Azoff nev­er gave up his first busi­ness — man­ag­ing tal­ent — and in late 2009, his rela­tion­ship with Dolan solved a prob­lem for an impor­tant client, Don Hen­ley of the Eagles. Hen­ley was embark­ing on a solo con­cert tour to cities as far flung as Boston, Chica­go and Wind­sor, Ontario, but as a solo act, his tick­et sales did not jus­ti­fy trans­porta­tion more cost­ly than a tour bus. “So Irv­ing says to Don, ‘I can get you a pri­vate plane, but you’re going to have to let Jim Dolan’s band open for you,’” recalls an insid­er. “Jim had the Gulf­stream. Don said fine. Don gets on the plane, and from the back, he waves at Jim. That’s how the tour went.”
     Dolan may not have struck up a friend­ship with Hen­ley, but he grew close to the Eagles’ Joe Walsh, a fel­low recov­ered alco­holic and drug addict. Walsh appeared as a guest artist on JD & The Straight Shot’s Right on Time album and pro­duced the band’s 2014 release, Where I’ve Been. “Joe and I hit it off,” says Dolan. “As a pro­duc­er, he pushed us pret­ty hard: ‘That wasn’t tight enough.’ ‘Rework that solo.’ He must have made me do a thou­sand frig­ging vocal takes for some of the songs. But in the end, we were proud of what we did.”
     Azoff was not hav­ing quite as much fun as chair­man of Live Nation, and on the last day of 2012, he resigned, declar­ing in an inter­view with The Wrap that run­ning a pub­lic com­pa­ny “sucks if you’re an entre­pre­neur.” He cashed in his Live Nation stock, and a hand­ful of mar­quee clients fol­lowed him from Front Line, which he no longer owned, to Azoff Music Man­age­ment. Dolan made his move. With­in months, the Madi­son Square Gar­den Com­pa­ny put out a press release announc­ing the advent of Azoff MSG Entertainment.

AZOFF’S INFLUENCE over Dolan extend­ed beyond music. At a 2013 Christ­mas par­ty at his home, Azoff intro­duced Dolan to Phil Jack­son, the for­mer coach of the Los Ange­les Lak­ers. Three months lat­er, Jack­son had a five-year, $60 mil­lion con­tract as pres­i­dent of the Knicks. The con­tract was ter­mi­nat­ed ear­ly after the Knicks set fran­chise records for straight loss­es.
     A rabid Lak­ers fan, Azoff had in 1999 seen his favorite team depart its long­time home, The Forum in Ingle­wood, for the new Sta­ples Cen­ter in down­town Los Ange­les. The move cost The Forum dear­ly. In its glo­ri­ous past, the venue had host­ed con­certs by the likes of Elvis Pres­ley, Jimi Hen­drix and The Rolling Stones. Since the loss of the Lak­ers, it had fall­en into decay. In late 2000, the Faith­ful Cen­tral Bible Church pur­chased the build­ing. In 2009, Azoff’s friend Jer­ry Moss, the co-founder of A&M Records turned phil­an­thropist, was look­ing for a place in Los Ange­les to set up a free med­ical clin­ic. “Irv­ing sug­gest­ed I call the church, and I did,” recalls Moss.
     Azoff soon learned that the church admin­is­tra­tion was strug­gling to pay the mort­gage on the build­ing. The Forum could be pur­chased inex­pen­sive­ly, per­haps at a fore­clo­sure price. The cost of ren­o­va­tion was anoth­er mat­ter. Azoff, then the chair­man of Live Nation, tried to per­suade his board to buy and restore the his­toric are­na. Two inde­pen­dent sources believe Azoff’s real motive was per­son­al. Live Nation’s biggest rival, Anschutz Enter­tain­ment Group, owned the Sta­ples Cen­ter, and at the time, Azoff was feud­ing with AEG chief exec­u­tive Tim Lei­weke. (Lei­weke has since become Azoff’s part­ner in Oak View Group.) “Irv­ing thought the best way to hurt Tim was to get The Forum,” pro­pos­es one source. (Through a spokesman, Azoff dis­putes that account.) The Live Nation board opposed the pur­chase. So in 2010, Azoff brought the idea of buy­ing The Forum to Dolan. “He got very excit­ed,” recalled Azoff eight years lat­er in his depo­si­tion for the Clip­pers law­suit.
     Mean­while, in 2010, James T. Butts Jr., the for­mer chief of police of San­ta Mon­i­ca, Calif., ran for may­or of Ingle­wood. The small city — about nine square miles, with a pop­u­la­tion of rough­ly 100,000 — was not flour­ish­ing. “We had a Siz­zler, a Big Donut and an $18 mil­lion struc­tur­al deficit,” recalls Butts. He imme­di­ate­ly saw the val­ue of the Forum project. Azoff opened up his home to throw a fundrais­ing par­ty for the can­di­date. JD & The Straight Shot pro­vid­ed live music. Butts nar­row­ly won the elec­tion.
     MSG pur­chased The Forum in June 2012 for $23.5 mil­lion, about $4.5 mil­lion above the fore­clo­sure price. (Butts says he insist­ed that the church make back what it had orig­i­nal­ly paid for the build­ing.) A for­mer top offi­cer at MSG claims Dolan told him in a pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion that Azoff had been invit­ed to invest his own mon­ey in The Forum, and that Azoff had declined. (Through a spokesman, Azoff denies receiv­ing such an invi­ta­tion. He does not dis­pute that he made no invest­ment.)
     The lack of any own­er­ship did not pre­vent Azoff, with Dolan’s con­sent, from treat­ing The Forum as his fief­dom. In 2015, when David “Doc” O’Connor became president/CEO of the Madi­son Square Gar­den Com­pa­ny, says a well-placed source, “Doc learned that Irv­ing had no finan­cial invest­ment in The Forum. It was 100% an MSG asset, and he thought as CEO he need­ed to run it.” To O’Connor’s sur­prise, says this source, “Jim told him, ‘You know what? You’ve got plen­ty to do in the com­pa­ny. Leave The Forum alone.’” Dolan rea­soned that Azoff and his asso­ciates worked on the West Coast and were bet­ter equipped to over­see the asset. It was yet anoth­er exam­ple of his unwa­ver­ing faith in Irv­ing Azoff.
     That faith was not alto­geth­er mis­placed. Under the aus­pices of Azoff MSG, The Forum under­went a ren­o­va­tion that was more of a rebirth. The score­board was ripped out and the lock­er rooms replaced with plush dress­ing rooms and lounges. The exte­ri­or was paint­ed Cal­i­for­nia sun­set red, the hard plas­tic seats removed for high-back uphol­stered ones. No ele­ment of décor, from the selec­tion of the rugs to the fab­ric on the walls, was over­looked. Once The Forum opened, Azoff “fought very hard to get the book­ings” to make the are­na a suc­cess, says a for­mer top man­ag­er at MSG. Since 2018, the build­ing has been the world’s third-high­est-gross­ing con­cert venue with a 15,001-plus capac­i­ty, after Madi­son Square Gar­den and London’s O2 Are­na. “On the oth­er hand,” con­tin­ues the source, “Irv­ing didn’t run The Forum very effi­cient­ly.”
     The lack of a clear man­age­ment struc­ture at The Forum cre­at­ed its own prob­lems. A num­ber of key man­agers left, com­plain­ing of a dys­func­tion­al work envi­ron­ment. In the end, MSG paid out-of-court set­tle­ments total­ing mil­lions of dol­lars to at least half a dozen aggriev­ed employ­ees.
     Even the high atten­dance at The Forum came at a cost due to the lack of ade­quate park­ing. May­or Butts was pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth in Ingle­wood, and avail­able land was becom­ing scarce. MSG worked out a deal to lease a por­tion of land with­in walk­ing dis­tance to the venue that real-estate bil­lion­aire Stan Kroenke had pur­chased in Inglewood’s Hol­ly­wood Park sec­tion for large-scale devel­op­ment. Kroenke charged MSG $25,000 per night. After MSG ran up an unpaid bill of $325,000, he imposed a lock­out.
     Butts stepped in and nego­ti­at­ed a barter deal between Kroenke and The Forum. The par­ties would use each other’s park­ing lots for free when oth­er­wise unoc­cu­pied. Butts recalls it took “at least five” tries to clinch the deal. As Azoff stat­ed in his depo­si­tion for the Clip­pers law­suit, “Mr. Dolan and Mr. Kroenke…are not the best of friends.” Butts found addi­tion­al park­ing for Forum patrons wher­ev­er he could — at a high school and even at a ceme­tery where his own moth­er was buried.
     Butts’ inter­ven­tion alle­vi­at­ed The Forum’s park­ing prob­lem, and he want­ed some­thing in return. MSG had been leas­ing land off West Cen­tu­ry Boule­vard in Ingle­wood, about a mile from The Forum — and used it per­haps twice. With Azoff’s bless­ing, Butts got the land back to sell to a buy­er whose iden­ti­ty was shield­ed, said the may­or, by a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. On June 15, 2017, the purchaser’s name was revealed to be Steve Ballmer, the bil­lion­aire own­er of the Los Ange­les Clip­pers bas­ket­ball team. The land would be used to con­struct an 18,000-seat sports and enter­tain­ment are­na. Dolan did not take the news well — “to say it mild­ly,” tes­ti­fied Azoff in the result­ing law­suit.
     Azoff fur­ther tes­ti­fied that he was so “embar­rassed” by the Clip­pers deal that “I offered my res­ig­na­tion to Dolan.” (Azoff was refer­ring to his work with The Forum. He was not offer­ing to resign from a con­sult­ing arrange­ment with MSG that paid him an annu­al $2 mil­lion. In any event, the res­ig­na­tion offer was declined.) “I’ve nev­er been blind­sided like this before in my entire career,” Azoff recalled telling Dolan. His blun­der would have been incon­se­quen­tial had MSG not failed to pro­tect its turf. Its devel­op­ment agree­ment with Ingle­wood con­tained no exclu­siv­i­ty clause that would have barred a com­pet­ing are­na from being built with­in city lim­its. When relin­quish­ing the land, MSG could have nego­ti­at­ed terms for its sub­se­quent use, but neglect­ed to do so, and it did not exer­cise an option to buy the land for $6.9 mil­lion, a frac­tion of what it would be worth today, even with­out the Clip­pers deal.
     Butts has been crit­i­cized for his secret nego­ti­a­tions with the Clip­pers, but he was under no legal oblig­a­tion to reveal con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion that could have cost his city a sig­nif­i­cant asset. Because of the lack of a non­com­pete clause in the agree­ment between MSG and Ingle­wood, the company’s breach-of-con­tract law­suit against the city and its may­or large­ly depend­ed upon a fraud claim. Azoff insist­ed that Butts had promised him that the West Cen­tu­ry land would be devel­oped into a tech­nol­o­gy park, although he admit­ted in his depo­si­tion that he had not a shred of proof to sup­port that — not so much as an email or a text mes­sage.
     Butts is still angry. “I nev­er told Irv­ing Azoff I was going to put a tech­nol­o­gy park there,” he says. “That’s a total canard. The lease ter­mi­na­tion was a real-estate deal that I nego­ti­at­ed for the city. On the oth­er side is a multi­bil­lion-dol­lar-val­ued com­pa­ny,” he says, refer­ring to MSG. “They could have put in a right of first refusal at any time. If I were a white per­son, they wouldn’t be embar­rassed to admit they nego­ti­at­ed poor­ly. But because I’m Black, I must have tricked them.” Butts has not for­got­ten the effort he invest­ed in find­ing a park­ing solu­tion for The Forum. “And my reward for that was to get sued — not just as a city offi­cial, but per­son­al­ly, in an attempt to intim­i­date me,” he says.
     Ballmer — whom Azoff referred to in emails as “Bal­lz” — need­ed to have his new sta­di­um built by the end of 2024, when the Clip­pers’ con­tract with the Sta­ples Cen­ter was set to expire. MSG’s law­suit may have been cal­cu­lat­ed to delay the sta­di­um to death — one of the strate­gies that Dolan had employed with the Jets and May­or Bloomberg in New York.
     Dolan appeared to be stick­ing by that play­book. In 2005, MSG had fund­ed an anti-sta­di­um com­mu­ni­ty group. This time around, a group called IRATE — Ingle­wood Res­i­dents Against Tak­ings and Evic­tions — filed law­suits chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of the Clip­pers’ sta­di­um on the grounds that secre­cy about the intend­ed buy­er vio­lat­ed California’s open-meet­ings law, known as the Brown Act. Attor­neys for Ingle­wood alleged in a pre­tri­al motion that IRATE was a front group cre­at­ed by and act­ing for MSG.
     In 2018, as the law­suit dragged on, Butts ran for reelec­tion and found him­self fac­ing an improb­a­ble oppo­nent: Marc Lit­tle, a sports and enter­tain­ment attor­ney who had been a pas­tor for the Faith­ful Cen­tral Bible Church and was a sig­na­to­ry to MSG’s pur­chase of The Forum. Lit­tle, a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive run­ning in a lib­er­al city, had amassed near­ly $1 mil­lion in cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions from MSG, Dolan, Azoff and such Hol­ly­wood play­ers as David Gef­fen, then-NBCU­ni­ver­sal vice chair­man Ron Mey­er and Kris Jen­ner — an enor­mous war chest for a may­oral can­di­date in a town that small. Butts still crushed Lit­tle and his oth­er oppo­nents in the 2018 elec­tion.
     A week lat­er, on Nov. 13, 2018, Dolan gave his depo­si­tion in the Clip­pers law­suit, which was record­ed on video. He proved a surly wit­ness with an inat­ten­tion to detail. It was one year to the day since David “Doc” O’Connor had been forced out of MSG — most like­ly for his stren­u­ous oppo­si­tion to the Sphere project — yet Dolan was unable to recall his ex-CEO’s name. He was unaware that MSG’s devel­op­ment agree­ment for The Forum grant­ed no exclu­siv­i­ty. “I’ve nev­er looked at the agree­ment,” he said.
     Louis R. “Skip” Miller, the lead attor­ney for the city, pressed him. “Did you ever read con­tracts, impor­tant con­tracts your com­pa­ny entered into after you became the head of the com­pa­ny?”
     “No,” replied Dolan.
     “So in the 16 years you’ve been the top offi­cer of the com­pa­ny, the chair­man of the board, you’ve nev­er read an impor­tant, mate­r­i­al con­tract that your com­pa­ny entered into?”
     “No,” reit­er­at­ed Dolan.
     “OK,” said the attor­ney. “That’s cer­tain­ly going to short­en the depo­si­tion a lit­tle bit.”
     “Good,” said Dolan.
     Miller seemed incred­u­lous. “I can’t wait to show this video at the tri­al,” he said.
     There would be no tri­al, how­ev­er. Ear­li­er this year, on March 24, Ballmer unveiled plans to buy The Forum for $400 mil­lion; the pur­chase was com­plet­ed May 4. His agree­ment requires him to main­tain the venue and its staff until a con­trac­tu­al sun­set date, which has not been dis­closed. After that, should he choose, Ballmer can raze the his­toric build­ing. “My sus­pi­cion is that Steve will fall in love with The Forum because it’s hard not to,” says Dolan. Sell­ing it, he adds, “was, busi­ness­wise, the right thing to do. But heart­wise…”
     Giv­en the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Clip­pers are­na could not have been stopped, the sale of The Forum seems log­i­cal. Dolan’s gen­eros­i­ty toward Azoff has puz­zled some of the insid­ers who knew about it even before it was dis­closed in an SEC fil­ing. The agree­ment Dolan made with Azoff — a hand­shake deal rather than a writ­ten agree­ment, accord­ing to pre­tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny in the Clip­pers law­suit — grant­ed Azoff 25% of the prof­it of any sale of The Forum over $200 mil­lion. MSG made a sim­i­lar-sound­ing deal with Azoff, to share in the upside of the sale of cer­tain unspec­i­fied Azoff Music busi­ness­es. (Through a spokesman, Azoff insists the two deals were entire­ly unre­lat­ed.) MSG’s upside deal with Azoff expires Oct. 8, and to date, it has amount­ed to naught. Azoff, for his part, ends up $48.7 mil­lion rich­er.
     “My per­son­al belief is that a $50 mil­lion high-five is some­thing the stock­hold­ers should be very inter­est­ed in,” says Andrew Holmes, a part­ner at the law firm of Holmes Tay­lor Cow­an & Jones and a for­mer SEC inves­ti­ga­tor, who was asked to com­ment on Azoff’s take. And not only the stock­hold­ers: Azoff’s pay­out trans­lates to near­ly $122,000 for each of the 400 employ­ees MSG is now let­ting go. Azoff has made no pub­lic state­ment about the MSG lay­offs, but in the July 22 edi­tion of Poll­star, a pub­li­ca­tion his com­pa­ny owns, he said he was “dis­ap­point­ed to see the big lay­offs at AEG,” adding, “The own­er of that com­pa­ny [Philip Anschutz] is one of the rich­est men in the world; what’s he sav­ing, $10 [million]-$20 mil­lion by lay­ing off all these peo­ple?”
     Dolan defends Azoff’s “not insub­stan­tial” pay­ment. “I don’t want to get deep into it,” he says. “Let me put it this way: He most def­i­nite­ly deserved what he earned at The Forum because with­out Irv­ing, it would not have been a success.”

THE FORUM REMAINS the only are­na-size venue in the Unit­ed States with no sports fran­chise. The MSG Sphere in Las Vegas will be the next. Dolan could have gone a dif­fer­ent way. Indeed, for­mer MSG CEO O’Connor had urged him to finance the venue devel­op­ment and invest­ment plans of Oak View Group, the part­ner­ship between Azoff and his for­mer rival Tim Lei­weke. Oak View’s projects include the Cli­mate Pledge Are­na in Seat­tle, along with oth­er sports and enter­tain­ment venues in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land; Palm Springs, Calif.; Milan; and else­where. Dolan wouldn’t hear of it — the cost of those projects would have ruled out his invest­ment in the Sphere. Oak View is today sup­port­ed by financ­ing from pri­vate equi­ty group Sil­ver Lake.
     Dolan con­firms that his “diver­gence” with Azoff — as he terms it — came down to a dif­fer­ence over “resources and vision.” He says, “If the Sphere is suc­cess­ful — which I believe it will be — it will total­ly change the venue busi­ness.” The large venues being built today, he con­tin­ues, “are all dual-pur­pose. Sports and enter­tain­ment. Inside of that com­pro­mise, you lose some­thing big. And I think The Forum proved that some­what. The Sphere will real­ly prove it. If it’s suc­cess­ful, we’ll be build­ing a lot more. We need Irving’s exper­tise — all those artists and every­thing. But the Sphere is a whole new plat­form. And that’s not the busi­ness that Irving’s in.”
     The MSG Sphere is Dolan’s futur­ist dream project much the way Voom was his father’s. Because the Sphere is not being con­struct­ed on a fixed-bid con­tract, there is no telling what it will cost to com­plete. (The offi­cial com­pa­ny esti­mate is $1.66 bil­lion, but the on-and-off work stop­pages caused by the coro­n­avirus cri­sis could eas­i­ly aug­ment that fig­ure.) The Dolan fam­i­ly has tra­di­tion­al­ly held a minor­i­ty posi­tion in MSG but a major­i­ty of the vot­ing stock. Should James ulti­mate­ly face resis­tance from his fam­i­ly and board of direc­tors over the ris­ing cost of the Sphere, he will, in a most iron­ic way, be fol­low­ing in Charles Dolan’s foot­steps.
     To be sure, Jim Dolan’s high-tech ven­ture is more of a ground­break­er than his father’s was. While Voom was a late entry into an exist­ing mar­ket, the world of enter­tain­ment has nev­er wit­nessed a ful­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ence on the scale of the Sphere. The inte­ri­or bowl of the Las Vegas are­na will hold the high­est-res­o­lu­tion LED screen on earth, to dis­play both live-action and com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed con­tent. Beam­form­ing tech­nol­o­gy, a means of trans­mit­ting sound with laser-like pre­ci­sion, will tar­get each indi­vid­ual audi­ence mem­ber, putting every guest, in the words of a cor­po­rate press release, in the audi­to­ry “sweet spot.” MSG Ven­tures, a live-enter­tain­ment tech­nol­o­gy divi­sion, was launched in 2016 as an adjunct to the Sphere; in Sep­tem­ber, the divi­sion will open a Bur­bank, Calif., stu­dio to help artists cre­ate visu­al con­tent to go with their music.
     No one doubts the MSG Sphere will be spec­tac­u­lar, but its suc­cess may depend as much on non­mu­si­cal events, such as esports tour­na­ments, as musi­cal ones. (Dolan says MSG Ven­tures has a sub­di­vi­sion for mass gam­ing.) The Sphere will have about the same seat­ing capac­i­ty as The Forum — but unlike the lat­ter, it won’t be suit­ed to tour­ing bands. “You won’t have some­one com­ing in for a day and then leav­ing because there’s no sense play­ing the Sphere with­out using the immer­sive media,” says Dolan. Instead, he is count­ing on res­i­den­cies, an arrange­ment that has served him well before; until the pan­dem­ic hit, Bil­ly Joel had a month­ly res­i­den­cy at the Gar­den for six years run­ning.
     The Vegas enter­tain­ment scene is already large­ly built on music res­i­den­cies. Dolan believes he can lure tal­ent away from oth­er venues. “The Sphere will give the artist a whole oth­er palette to work with,” he says. “Music cre­ates imagery in the mind. Now the artist will have the abil­i­ty, more than ever before, to cre­ate imagery around their music. If it’s Sting and he’s singing about sav­ing the Earth, we can put him in the mid­dle of the Ama­zon rain­for­est. If it’s a spacey rock song, we’ll put you on Mars.”

FOR THE MOMENT, no one is going any­where. As the pan­dem­ic rages on, the two pub­lic com­pa­nies cre­at­ed from Madi­son Square Garden’s mito­sis in April, MSG Sports and MSG Enter­tain­ment, are essen­tial­ly idle.
     Dolan, whose pub­lic approval rat­ings were at their high­est after 9/11 when he orga­nized The Con­cert for New York City, was hop­ing he could reopen Madi­son Square Gar­den this year — at least for one night. He had an idea for a COVID-19-relat­ed ben­e­fit show at the Gar­den, acces­si­ble to any­one who passed an anti­body test his com­pa­ny would admin­is­ter for free. Dolan’s plan tanked when he couldn’t get gov­ern­ment approval.
     “They won’t let us do it,” he says. “I spoke to all the peo­ple on the state lev­el, all the peo­ple on the fed­er­al lev­el. I went to Wash­ing­ton. I argued why the city need­ed this, the coun­try need­ed this, and it would be a great way to lift everybody’s spir­its. And I just got stonewalled.”
     Dolan is strain­ing with impa­tience — not just as a busi­ness­man, but as a musi­cian. After mak­ing the tough deci­sion to can­cel the Rock­ettes hol­i­day show, he start­ed writ­ing a wist­ful new song called “Nobody’s Com­ing for Christ­mas.” He says, “I miss play­ing for peo­ple. And I miss my old band­mates. I’ll just keep writ­ing and wait­ing for a chance to get every­body in the stu­dio. Maybe we’ll do one more record. All I have to say is, I’m pick­ing up my gui­tar again and giv­ing it anoth­er shot.” ♦