North America’s elite National Basketball Association (NBA) has announced a new multi-year partnership with Sands China, the Macau branch of resort giant Las Vegas Sands, to bring NBA games to the Special Administrative Region.
This will begin in 2025, when the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns will play a pair of pre-season friendly fixtures against each other.
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The pair of games, which will take place on October 10 and October 12, will be staged at the city’s 14,000-capacity Venetian Arena.
In terms of sponsors, it was also announced that a presenting partner, e-commerce heavyweight Alibaba’s 88VIP membership scheme, will cover the two games.
Other marketing partners for the two games will include global brands such as sportswear giant NIKE and watch manufacturer Tissot, as well as Chinese brands such as dairy company Mengniu and travel agency Ctrip.
Sands China, the official integrated resort partner of the NBA’s NBA China branch, will promote the games.
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By GlobalDataBasketball, and the NBA in particular, is massively popular in China, and that includes Macau, which previously had the Macau Black Bears professional team of the East Asia Super League competition.
The relationship between the NBA and China however has been chilly in recent years following comments regarding 2019 protests in Hong Kong made by then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey which saw the league’s coverage and commercial activity in the country heavily restricted.
Those comments also saw NBA global games in China ceased until now.
Fences do seem to have been mended however, not least thanks to Las Vegas Sands president and chief Patrick Dumont, who also happens to be the governor of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks Franchise.
Dumont stated on the NBA’s trip to Macau: “NBA basketball is a global sport that attracts people of different ages, backgrounds and cultures. It creates exciting experiences that connect people while playing a positive role in communities. Sands is honored to bring The NBA China Games to Macao so that the most elite level of basketball can be experienced directly by the fans who are so passionate about it.”
The NBA has ventured to Macau once before, in 2007, when the Venetian Arena hosted a pre-season friendly between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Orlando Magic.
In terms of China in general, the NBA last visited the country in 2019, when the Nets faced the Los Angeles Lakers in a pair of friendly matches.
Prior to Morey’s comments, friendlies in China and Chinese special administrative regions had been commonplace, taking place annually almost every year between 2007 and 2019 (with the exception of 2011), with the first pair of fixtures in the country having taken place in 2004.
