Knicks, Rangers Split Complete as Dolan Discount Shrinks
Madison Square Garden Sports completed its spinoff of the New York Rangers on Monday, splitting the NHL team from the NBA’s New York Knicks into separate publicly traded companies. Investors can buy shares in the individual teams under the MSGK (Knicks) and MSGR (Rangers) tickers, starting Tuesday.
MSG Sports will be renamed MSG Knickerbockers and will include the G League’s Westchester Knicks. MSG Rangers will also count the AHL’s Hartford Wolf Pack and the MSG Training Center. James Dolan is the CEO and chairman of the new entity and continues in those roles for MSGK. The spinoff ratio is one MSGR share for every two MSGS shares.
The enterprise value of MSG Sports was $10.35 billion as of Monday after the stock doubled from its September 2025 low. That was still a steep discount, however, to the combined private market valuations of the Knicks and Rangers, which Sportico most recently valued at $12.8 billion and $4.15 billion, respectively, and $16.95 billion combined.
The stock got a boost in 2025 when Mark Walter bought the Los Angeles Lakers for $10 billion. Walter is now selling the team to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger for $12.5 billion.
The Knicks’ 2026 NBA championship helped shrink the gap further, but not as much as the decision to split into two companies—the stock rose 16% on the day of the announcement. “[The split] would conceivably make it easier for one team or the other to be sold, or for a third-party minority investment to put a fresh valuation marker on one or both teams,” Seaport Research Partners analyst David Joyce said in an email.
The “Dolan Discount” is in part due to fans, who may trade the stock seasonally in response to team performance, disliking how owner Dolan runs the franchises, according to Joyce. More important is the belief that Dolan has no intention of selling either team, as a sale would fully unlock their value.
For comparison, the Atlanta Braves’ enterprise value of $4.03 billion is nearly on par with Sportico’s $4.11 billion valuation of the franchise in March, as many investors anticipate a sale of the MLB team in the next couple of years.
MSGS traded at a discount of 39% before the split, and that markdown has narrowed considerably from its peak a year ago and is smaller than at any point since 2021. Last fall, the stock’s enterprise value was less than half of the teams’ combined valuations.
One factor in splitting the Knicks and Rangers is a change to the tax code that will hit both teams, as well as the Braves, beginning in 2027. Publicly traded sports teams will have the tax deduction expense capped at $1 million for their five highest-paid players, in addition to the current rule with a $1 million cap on the top five executives’ pay. In April, Joyce estimated the Knicks’ tax bill at $55 million and the Rangers’ at $20 million. The teams are lobbying to try to carve out an exemption for sports.
MSGS always pooled the Knicks and Rangers financials in its quarterly filings, but the spinoff gives insight into the money of the individual teams. The Rangers’ revenue was $341 million for the 2025-26 season, with an EBITDA of -$22.5 million. The Knicks’ title run fueled a record $812 million in revenue before revenue sharing, as well as EBITDA of $55 million, based on MSG Sports’ filings and excluding the Rangers.
Separating the teams is the latest in a long line of spinoffs orchestrated by the Dolan family. Dolan family patriarch Charles founded Cablevision, the cable TV company, which acquired 50% of the Knicks, Rangers and related businesses in 1994 and the rest of the MSG properties three years later. In 2010, Madison Square Garden was spun off from Cablevision into its own publicly traded company.
In 2015, James Dolan split MSG in two with the sports teams and venues (Madison Square Garden, Beacon Theatre, Radio City Music Hall and Chicago Theater) in one and Madison Square Garden Network (MSGN) in the other.
The next machination was to split the teams and venues in 2020 under MSGS and Madison Square Garden Entertainment. This transaction forced the Knicks and Rangers to sign leases with their new landlords, MGSE. Meanwhile, Dolan launched his Sphere business under MSGN and renamed the company Sphere Entertainment in 2023.
Source: www.sportico.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.