The National Basketball Association is finally launching its first games in China since 2019 and has pledged to “learn” how to bend to Chinese communist rule after its dustup with China’s rulers six years ago.
The NBA is finally making a comeback in red China with its first games coming up at the Venetian Hotel in China’s Macao Special Administrative Region. The game will feature the Phoenix Suns and Brooklyn Nets, and tickets sold out almost immediately upon going on sale, according to the Global Times.
But Chinese authorities are still warning the NBA that it needs to “learn” from its past “mistakes.”
The NBA has been frozen out of the Chinese market since 2019 when then-Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey angered red China’s dictatorial government by daring to plead for democracy in Chinese-administered Hong Kong.
Morey’s tweet on the protests for democracy in Hong Kong sent the NBA into exile as Chinese rulers scolded the league for daring to oppose Chinese communism. Since then, the league’s once-burgeoning presence in China has ground to a halt, and the NBA has been locked out of the market.
After China suspended ties with the NBA — which had played more than a dozen games in China up to 2019 — NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admitted that the league lost “hundreds of millions” in scotched business deals after Morey’s tweet riled China’s anger.
The NBA pressured Morey to retract his tweet in support of the protests for democracy in Hong Kong and eventually drove him out of his position with the Rockets. The league also apologized to the communist regime in Beijing.
The NBA always claimed that pro basketball is a “bridge” between the West and China, but the Morey incident proved that the so-called bridge was really only a one-way street and that China would brook no defiance to its despotic rule. Now, the NBA is showing that, bridge or no, the cash is really all they are interested in, and they are perfectly willing to toe any line Chinese bureaucrats draw in the sand.
The money is significant, too. According to ESPN, the NBA’s stake in China is worth $5 billion to the league.
“China is the NBA’s most important market outside of the US, with hundreds of millions of fans, huge media rights sponsorship potential. Walking away is never going to be a long-term option,” said Dartmouth business professor Paul Argenti.
That relationship is only getting deeper, too. This week, Chinese cut-rate e-tailer Alibaba announced a significant new deal with the NBA.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: Facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston, or at X/Twitter @WTHuston
Read the full article here