With another China Games sweeping the country, the National
Basketball Association (NBA) is ready to tap into China's
fast-growing domestic league.
NBA Commissioner David Stern, who has led the NBA for 23 years
and overseen basketball's transformation into one of China's most
popular sports, said he expects to get involved in the China
Basketball Association (CBA) league and the national team's affairs
in the future.
"We hope to have further dialogue about the growth of basketball
cooperatively with the CBA," Stern said in Shanghai when asked
about the possibility of helping manage the Chinese league. "We had
and we will have some serious discussions with the CBA to promote
basketball and we would like to bring our expertise to them both in
management and marketing.
"We do think we will be able to help the CBA build a larger
infrastructure, but that will be just one arena."
Earlier this month, the NBA announced the establishment of NBA
China, which will be headed by the former boss of Microsoft's China
operations, Tim Chen. It is seen as the first step towards an
eventual NBA-managed Chinese domestic league.
Chen, who took up his post on Monday, has been tasked with
liaising with the Chinese government and sporting officials to help
harness the explosive growth potential of the NBA in the world's
most populous nation.
"My goal is to grow basketball as big as I can and let everybody
play basketball," said Chen. "It's not only about top-level
competitions but also promoting a healthy lifestyle throughout all
our communities in China."
A country with 1.3 billion people, 300 million of whom play
basketball - equal to the entire population of the US - is a truly
attractive destination for the NBA.
The US-based league lined up a string of events this year
involving the CBA, including an invitation for the Chinese national
team to join the NBA's Summer League and the Stankovic Cup, which
featured the D-League All-Star Team.
It is also currently sponsoring a grassroots nationwide
two-on-two basketball tournament involving nearly 35,000 players in
112 cities.
The NBA also boasts lucrative advertising partnerships in China
with 20 leading global brands.
Basketball is already a big thing in China, with millions of
people tuning in to watch NBA games on 51 TV stations around the
country.
The 15-team CBA, which begins its 12th season next month, has
developed a large fan base and has already produced talented NBA
stars like Houston Rockets All-Star center Yao Ming and Yi
Jianlian, who is about to start his rookie season with the
Milwaukee Bucks.
Currently the Swiss-based sports management group Infront has an
agreement to run marketing operations for the CBA. They are
entering the second year of a three-year deal to market the league
and the Chinese national team.
Despite its rapid growth, the domestic league has yet to see any
revenue.
"To be frank, we didn't make any money from the CBA," league
director Hao Guohua told Sina.com in April. "Some of our clubs are
still struggling financially so to cash in is out of question."
Last week the NBA concluded a series of preseason games in
Spain, Italy, Turkey and England featuring the Toronto Raptors,
Boston Celtics, Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves.
The international preseason games have been overwhelmingly
successful. But that doesn't mean international expansion will be
easy, experts warned, especially in China.
"The NBA has to be careful," Xia Song, one of China's top
basketball agents and a former official with the national team,
told AFP. "The market in China is very complicated. They can come
in as a leader on the floor, but they need to show they are team
players; otherwise there will be a lot of adversity."
(China Daily October 18, 2007)