While the price Joe Tsai paid for the Nets and Barclays Center has been reported at between $3.3 and $3.5 billion — the most ever for an NBA franchise and arena, there’s been no reporting on how much he paid James Dolan and MSG for the Liberty in January 2019. Terms of the sale were never revealed publicly.
At the time, Tsai was a minority owner —49 percent— of the Nets and held no interest in Barclays. He had an option to buy the rest of the Nets, then set for this year, but things accelerated and in September 2019, Tsai became “governor,” the principal owner, of the Nets and operator of Barclays Center, which is owned by the State of New York and leased.