NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday the league could lose “hundreds of millions of dollars” from the China fallout, according to the New York Times.
The backlash from China started in October after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
China Central Television stopped airing games. Chinese sponsors pulled out of agreements. Silver, during his state of the league address during All-Star Weekend, called the tension “substantial.”
“I think that the magnitude of the loss will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Certainly probably less than $400 million, maybe even less than that,” he said, according to the New York Times.
The NBA makes an annual revenue of about $9.5 billion, according to the Times.
This has already affected projections for next season’s salary cap and luxury tax line. Initially expected to be $116 million, the league now anticipates the salary cap to be $115 million. Final figures will come out after the playoffs.
Silver said he believes NBA and China relations will “return to normalcy fairly soon,” though he couldn’t give any specific updates on when CCTV would start to air games again. Silver said he thinks it will happen “at some point in the future.”
Chinese streaming network Tencent has been airing about three games per night, according to the Times.
The outlet reported the NBA is donating money in response to the coronavirus and is discussing playing more preseason games in China, both of which could help the relationship between China and the league.
“We were taken off the air in China for a period of time, and it caused our many business partners in China to feel it was, therefore, inappropriate to have ongoing relationships with us,” Silver said. “But I don’t have any sense that there’s any permanent damage to our business there, and as I’ve said before, we accept the consequences of our system and our values.”