The NBA is set to return to China for the first time in six years, with two preseason games in Macau next October between the Brooklyn Nets and Phoenix Suns, sources reported Friday.
The league has not hosted games in China since 2019, following a tweet by then-Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey expressing support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
Basketball is hugely popular in China, but the controversy led to the NBA losing hundreds of millions of dollars as the league was pulled from Chinese television until 2022.
ESPN, citing unnamed sources, said the relationship between the NBA and China had improved with the help of NBA China CEO Michael Ma, who was hired in 2020.
Reports said the games in Macau will be played at the Venetian Arena, part of the Las Vegas Sands conglomerate controlled by the Adelson family, the majority ownership group of the Dallas Mavericks.
The games will be played on Oct. 10 and 12 next year and are part of a multimillion-dollar agreement to stage two annual NBA preseason 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 NBA 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 sought to grow globally, including playing preseason games in Abu Dhabi earlier this month.
Emirates 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 preseason 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 where gambling is allowed.
The multibillion-dollar industry remains the city’s economic lifeline and main attraction for visitors, although Chinese leader Xi Jinping has urged Macau to diversify its economy.