NBA to Return to China with Multiyear Handle Macau

NBA to host pre-season video games in Macau from 2025

Deal marks NBA’s go back to China after 2019 debate

*

Macau casinos aiming to improve non-gaming revenue

(Rewrites to include context that deal marks NBA’s go back to China)

By Farah Master

HONG KONG, Dec 6 (Reuters) – The National Basketball Association (NBA) has signed a multiyear offer to play pre-season video games in Macau from 2025, marking the league’s return to the Chinese market after a years-long absence that followed debate over the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

Local media quoted NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum as stating the NBA would host two pre-season video games yearly for the next five years at casino operator Sands China’s Venetian arena in Macau, an unique administrative region of China. The first games, scheduled for October of next year, will pit the Brooklyn Nets against the Phoenix Suns.

A source familiar with the matter confirmed the local media reports of the deal. The NBA did not immediately respond to an ask for comment.

Although China has just recently hosted NBA legends celeb games, consisting of one arranged for Saturday at the Venetian home, the pre-season deal will mark a return of routinely set up NBA play to China.

The NBA’s lack followed a of controversy around remarks five years earlier by the Houston Rockets’ then-General Manager Daryl Morey, who published a message on social networks in support of anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

Beijing suspended the broadcast of NBA games following that event, prompting business sponsors to run away and the league to suffer what it described at the time as dramatic monetary effects. Pre-season NBA video games in China were likewise scrapped.

In February, Joe Tsai, owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball group and chairman of Chinese tech business Alibaba, stated the occurrence was water under the bridge which the NBA would enjoy to bring video games back to China and Macau.

Macau is the only place in China where residents have the ability to legally bet in gambling establishments.

Its federal government and Beijing have actually been prompting the six licensed casinos – Wynn Macau, Sands China, SJM Holdings, Galaxy Entertainment, Melco and MGM China – to increase their percentage of income from non-gaming.

Macau’s economy is greatly dependent on the gambling establishment industry, which contributes around 80% of local tax income.

In 2015, Macau’s federal government rolled out its first plan centred on a technique where tourism and leisure are the primary pillars, supported by emerging industries such as traditional Chinese medicine, health, financial services and technology, along with conventions, exhibitions, trade, culture and sports.

It goes for non-gaming markets to represent around 60% of Macau’s GDP by 2028 versus 50% pre-pandemic in 2019.

(Reporting by Farah Master; Additional reporting by Brenda Goh; Editing by Shri Navaratnam, Nicholas Yong and Edmund Klamann)