China welcomes back NBA after six-year hiatus

The NBA is set to make its long-awaited return to China next October with two pre-season games in Macau featuring the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns, according to reports on Friday.  

This marks the league’s first games in China since 2019, when a controversial tweet by then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement led to a major fallout.

The incident resulted in the NBA being pulled from Chinese television, costing the league hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

Basketball remains immensely popular in China, and the relationship between the NBA and the country has seen gradual improvement.

ESPN credits NBA China chief executive Michael Ma, who took on the role in 2020, with helping rebuild ties.

The games are expected to take place at the Venetian Arena in Macau, part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate, which is controlled by the Adelson family—the majority owners of the Dallas Mavericks.

This return signals a renewed partnership between the NBA and China, with hopes of re-establishing the league’s strong presence in one of its largest international markets.

Games will be played on October 10 and 12 next year and are part of a multimillion-dollar agreement to stage two annual NBA pre-season matches over the next five years in Macau, according to a South China Morning Post report.

“The most important fan base for the NBA is here in Macau, and we have a partner in Sands China that is investing in sports, so that is why we are bringing the games back,” the newspaper quoted the NBA’s deputy commissioner Mark Tatum as saying.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at a sports management conference in October that he thought the league would “bring back games to China at some point”.

“We had a well-known incident there pre-pandemic with a tweet and China’s government took us off the air for a period of time,” Silver said.

“We accepted that. We stood by our values.”

The NBA has looked to grow globally, including playing pre-season games in Abu Dhabi earlier this month.

Emirates Airlines sponsors the NBA Cup, the league’s in-season tournament.

China is home to a huge basketball fanbase and from 2004 to 2019, 17 teams played a total of 28 pre-season games there.

Macau is a special administrative region under China’s “one country, two systems” framework.

Known as China’s Las Vegas, Macau is the only Chinese city that allows gambling.

The multi-billion-dollar industry has remained the city’s economic lifeline and main attraction for visitors, although Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged Macau to diversify its portfolio.