1. Placate the US by putting out a public statement saying "We support freedom of speech for our people."
2. Placate China by using a backchannel to ensure that no one in the NBA actually uses this nominal freedom to say something that hurts China's feelings.
Actually standing up would require supporting a statement that had been said instead of offerring vague support for future statements which may or may not ever occur.
That should get some attention.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/shameful-fans-with-free-hong-...
1. a) "Steve Kerr's silence shows NBA-China relationship is league's third rail" - [https://www.nbcsports.com/bayarea/warriors/steve-kerrs-silen...]
b) [https://twitter.com/JamesHasson20/status/1181422479115456512]
3. "Opinion: It's time for LeBron James to speak out on China, regardless of Nike ties" - [https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/josh-peter/2...]
> However, a statement posted in Chinese by the NBA on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging site, appeared different, according to translators.
> “We feel greatly disappointed at Houston Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey’s inappropriate speech, which is regrettable," the statement read. "Without a doubt, he has deeply offended many Chinese basketball fans. Morey has clarified that his stance on this issue does not represent either Houston Rockets or the NBA. From NBA’s perspective, people can be interested in different subjects and freely share their opinions. We take respecting Chinese history and culture as a serious matter. We also hope that sports and the NBA, as a unified source of positive energy, can continue to build bridges between countries and bring people together. "
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/07/nba-chi...
Regardless of whether the NBA has control over what is said on that account, it's pretty shitty to have it one way in one country and another way elsewhere while hiding behind a language barrier. If this kind of double-speak continues, they're playing us all for fools.
> However, a statement posted in Chinese by the NBA on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging site, appeared different, according to translators.
> “We feel greatly disappointed at Houston Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey’s inappropriate speech, which is regrettable," the statement read. "Without a doubt, he has deeply offended many Chinese basketball fans. Morey has clarified that his stance on this issue does not represent either Houston Rockets or the NBA. From NBA’s perspective, people can be interested in different subjects and freely share their opinions. We take respecting Chinese history and culture as a serious matter. We also hope that sports and the NBA, as a unified source of positive energy, can continue to build bridges between countries and bring people together. "
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2019/10/07/nba-chi...
That was nothing but PR doubletalk.
One second you are in the market.
Poof, you are not anymore.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
--
Investing in China as a western company to earn money is the worst business decision you can have.
Knowledge transfer for manufacturing is the second.
I read an article very recently (NY Times, maybe?) that laid out the numbers, and the amount of money the NBA earns in China dwarfs its U.S. revenue.
not like China is going to come up with their own basketball league
It already has basketball leagues. And considering that China has exported star players to the NBA, it's certainly a possibility.
Those numbers are outdated and incomplete, but basically describe the relative market size.
Maybe you are thinking of rate of growth.
EDIT: As tanilama pointed out my numbers are wrong. The USA (ESPN & TNT) TV deal is about ~$2.6B per year. The Tencent streaming deal is ~$1.5B over 5 years. I don't know about CCTV.
https://www.cbc.ca/sports/basketball/nba/nba-tv-deal-how-the...
Annually it says the revenue is 2.6B. Not sure how much revenue they are making from China on a yearly basis (Tencent's contract is 5 years).
pretty sure that basically describes the relative market valuation - given income differences/relative cache of the two different leagues, market size vs valuation would be vastly different.
Source?
>It already has basketball leagues.
I guess it's a good thing I didn't say they don't. Partial quoting to try to make a point where there isn't one isn't very cool.
>And considering that China has exported star players to the NBA, it's certainly a possibility.
It's exported exactly one star: yao Ming, and one slightly above average player in Jeremy Lin. And those two were so far apart they never played in the NBA at the same time. If you think one star every 30 years is going to be good enough to replace an NBA that produces multiple stars every other year.... I guess pass whatever you're smoking my way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Lin
Jeremy Lin is of Chinese descent. I didn't say he was born there.
Note that this is different from just having heritage in a country. There's immigration only a couple generations back in my family, but it's already mixed to the point that I wouldn't call myself any specific country-American.
What if Daryl Morey had tweeted that he believed marriage was between a man and a woman?
There's no doubt he would have been fired and deplatformed faster than greased lightning...
Social media is making it hard for individuals to keep their personal thoughts separate from their work.
Not sure what the answer is. Everybody chill?
You wouldn't see countries threatening to ban the entire NBA.
> There's no doubt he would have been fired and deplatformed faster than greased lightning...
Sign me up for a lot of doubt!
I don’t understand this. They could lost all their market in China which is not a small number and in return, long-term financially, nothing. It is not like Chinese people can’t live without it. There are more than enough entertainments for Chinese people to enjoy.
On the other hand, if the NBA doesn't stand up to China, a large part of their core audience will find something else to do.
That question should be addressed to the Chinese government, they are the one wanting to block the league.
That said, the reason additional profits matter is that 51% of the revenue (not profits) go to the players, and the salary cap is tied directly to total revenue. This was collectively bargained and cannot be changed without a renegotiation. A lot of decisions have been made making assumptions about revenue that include revenue from China. On the player side, the total amount of money available to them is directly impacted by how much money is generated in China.
All that said, the NBA and the players should absolutely speak out and dare the CCP to delete the NBA. It's the most popular sport in the country and they've spent years cultivating the relationship. People will notice if it disappears.
1 - highlighting that total revenue generated directly impacts the amount of money available to players (as in there is a legal document outlining this)
2 - Ownership groups and the league as a whole have made many decisions based on an assumption of 49% of future revenues generated, so reductions in that future revenue stream are a lot riskier than "we just won't make as much profit." It's possible that for some teams, the reduction in revenue could actually force them to operate substantially in the red.
Once again, just want to be clear that I'm just pointing out the actual financial situation and that I still think the NBA should and could call China's bluff. It would likely sting in the short term, but China has invested so much in building up the NBA domestically that it will be really difficult to just delete it without any kind of backlash.
Long-term, I imagine the NBA is going to put more resources into the Indian market to reduce their reliance on a single overseas market.
Why not? Is it inconceivable that in the future the CBA will be able to compete with the NBA for top talent? I guarantee that down the road a future Zion Williamson will choose to play in China over New Orleans. This won't be in the near future mind you, but as the Chinese economy grows, and as basketball gets more popular, I don't see why this couldn't be the future.
Also, there are a great many cultural and economic reasons that foreign players generally avoid playing in China's existing professional sports league. Political oppression is just one of those reasons.
"We support free speech" is a cop-out, because China is happy for you to support free speech, as long as you don't say anything they don't like. It would be a stronger stance to say, "Actually, we think Morey was right", especially if it's going to cost them money to do so.
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1181497808563658752
Really I don't know what more you're expecting. This is a strong stance.
Even if they did, so what? There's certainly room in the world for quite a few basketball leagues.
I mean, after all, Hong Kong was occupied by the British for over 100 years. And it played a huge role in the opium trade. So I can imagine how it could be a substantial third-rail issue.
That all said it'd be awesome if they chose to push back even though it's entirely destructive to themselves.
Lastly, there are no American corporations, nothing should be given to them because they're assumed to be American and nothing should be expected of them - anything required of them should be encoded into law so that one corporation can't exploit the morally correct decision of another corporation as a weakness.