NBA to return to China with preseason games for first time since 2019 fallout
The NBA will host two preliminary games in Macau next October, its deputy commissioner said Friday, marking its return to China after more than five years of being frozen.
No NBA games have been held in China since two pre-season games in 2019, following a tweet from then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Morey posted an image with a slogan used by protesters urging the world to “Stand with Hong Kong.”
He later deleted the tweet and apologized, but China effectively cut ties with the league after NBA executives defended Morey’s right to freedom of expression.
Basketball is extremely popular in China and in the fallout the NBA lost hundreds of millions of dollars due to being taken off Chinese television until 2022.
“It is my pleasure to announce that the Brooklyn Nets and the Phoenix Suns will play two pre-season games at the Venetian Arena at Sands on October 10 and 12, 2025,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum in Macau.
Macau is a special administrative region under China’s ‘one country, two systems’ framework and is known as the country’s Las Vegas as it is the only city where gambling is allowed.
Tatum said “this region was home to some of the most passionate NBA fans” in the world.
The Venetian Arena is part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family, the majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
ESPN, citing unnamed sources, said the NBA’s relationship with China had improved with the help of NBA China CEO Michael Ma, who was hired in 2020.
According to the South China Morning Post, the games will be part of a multi-million dollar deal to host two annual NBA pre-season games in Macau over the next five years.
Las Vegas Sands was “excited…(to) announce a multi-year partnership with one of the most powerful and iconic global sports brands in history,” CEO Patrick Dumont told a news conference in Macau.
Basketball fans in Beijing welcomed the announcement.
“Since NBA games have been absent in China for some time, their return would be very beneficial for amateur basketball fans to experience the highest level of competition,” Zhou Dacheng, a 32-year-old fan, told AFP outside an outdoor court. in central Beijing.
“As a resident of Guangdong, I often visit Macau because it is very close. I definitely plan to watch these matches,” Zhou added.
However, some social media users were pessimistic that NBA games would ever return to the mainland.
“Can only go to Macau… this relationship (between China and the NBA) has not been restored at all,” said a Beijing-based user.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver predicted at a sports management conference in October that the league would “bring games back to China at some point.”
“We had a known incident there before the pandemic with a tweet and the Chinese government took us down for a while,” Silver said.
“We have accepted that. We stood by our values.”
The NBA has aimed to grow globally, including playing its recent pre-season games in Abu Dhabi.
Emirates Airlines sponsors the NBA Cup, the league’s seasonal tournament.
China is home to a huge basketball fan base and from 2004 to 2019, 17 teams played a total of 28 pre-season games there.
Macau’s multibillion-dollar gambling industry is still its economic lifeline and main draw for visitors, although Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged the city to diversify its portfolio.