The NBA returns to China after six years

I’m in Macau, the gaming capital of the world. I’m here for the NBA’s return to China for the past six years, there haven’t been any NBA games here. looking at these big signs hanging over the buildings. It reminds me of being here in 2019. The players were sitting in their hotel and could see the workers tearing down those same types of banners and peeling their faces off the building. A few days earlier, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey had sent a tweet in support of the protesters in Hong Kong. Well, this bothered the Chinese government a lot. The NBA backed him. We make no apologies for the fact that Daryl exercised his freedom of speech. And then chaos engulfed him. That whole week. The sponsors withdrew. And many players were worried about whether they would be allowed to return home if things got worse. It was that surreal. They lost around 400 million dollars. Just because of that situation, the Chinese market is huge for the NBA. There are a lot of basketball fans here…. and the league has been working to cultivate them for decades. Therefore, coming here to Macau and playing a game in China again is something very important for the league. When you ask someone in the league how did these games come about? The name they mentioned is Patrick Dumont. He is a senior executive at Sands Casino. And owner of the Dallas Mavericks. In 2021, the Chinese government was renegotiating what are called concessions with the casinos here in Macau. In those concession agreements, the government required casinos to spend a certain amount on non-gaming activities, such as entertainment, such as sports. And Sands had this arena at the Venetian, so Dumont saw bringing the NBA here as an opportunity to satisfy that requirement. One of the other major players here was Joe Sy, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets. Joe tsai is the chairman of Alibaba Group, a Chinese technology giant. He has many deep ties to the Chinese government, networks, and spent a lot of time in recent years meeting with Chinese officials and organizing events celebrating Chinese culture. They have spoken to the Chinese media and said: this market is very important to us. We care about this market more than any other team in the NBA. They even launched a reality show. This is a dance team competition to choose dancers for their matches here in Macau. Get ready: “The Brooklyn Nets will find the best dancers in China.” There is a lot at stake for these teams because. The league saw what happened when something went wrong and they lost this market however briefly. There is a feeling that this has to go well and that this is a great opportunity to recover something they lost.