“We pay a lot of attention to what happens in other leagues,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told Yahoo Finance when asked about what the NBA is going through in China. “Sooner or later, something happens to everybody. Your time is going to come. And we try to pay attention as to how they handle crises like these and problems like these and how they try to move forward.”
Tag: China
When asked what he’d do if he was in …
The captain of the Chinese national …
The captain of the Chinese national team Yi Jianlian became the all time leading scorer in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) in an away game on Thursday, leading Guangdong Southeast Tigers to ease past Tianjin Pioneers 140-93 in the eighth round of the league. Yi contributed 20 points for the visiting team in the match on Thursday as his total score rose up to 11,177 points, surpassing 11,165 points by his long-time teammate Zhu Fangyu.
Report: Chinese backlash costing Rockets over $7 million this season
The Chinese backlash to Daryl Morey’s tweet could reportedly cost the Rockets $20 million, once terminated multiyear deals are calculated.
The Chinese backlash to the now infamous Hong Kong tweet by Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey could cost the franchise nearly $20 million once terminated multiyear deals are calculated, according to a story published Tuesday by ESPN‘s Kevin Arnovitz.
The ongoing controversy could also have ramifications for owner Tilman Fertitta and superstar guard James Harden, if no resolution is reached between the NBA and its Chinese partners. Arnovitz writes:
No team has felt the brunt of the fallout more than the Rockets. League sources say the franchise has lost more than $7 million in revenue this season from cancelled Chinese sponsorship agreements and nearly $20 million overall when terminated multiyear deals are calculated.
Previous Rockets owner Leslie Alexander was able to parlay the Rockets’ presence in China into numerous investment opportunities, from wine distribution to the Chinese auto aftermarket. The friction between the NBA and China could temper any ambitions his successor, Tilman Fertitta, has to expand his portfolio into China after paying $2.2 billion for the team in 2017. For their superstar James Harden, the losses could be considerable if no resolution is reached. A source says Harden’s endorsement agreement with Shanghai’s SPD Bank Credit Card is imperiled.
One month later, the NBA is still making sense of how a tweet exploded into an international incident. A few peeks behind the scenes of a conflict that has receded from public view, but lingers.https://t.co/paXTk2o658
— Kevin Arnovitz (@kevinarnovitz) November 12, 2019
The financial amount of Harden’s endorsement pact with SPD Bank Credit Card was not reported in the story.
Two days after Morey’s original post, Harden attempted to mend fences with an apology to Chinese fans for the team’s involvement in the controversy. Harden typically travels to China at least once per NBA offseason for endorsement purposes and to promote his brand.
The overall terms are roughly in line with an October report from the Houston Chronicle‘s Jonathan Feigen, who said the fallout from Morey’s tweet in support of the Hong Kong protest movement could cost the Rockets between $10 million and $25 million. It remains to be seen if any of those relationships can ultimately be repaired.
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Just a year ago, Tencent Holdings Ltd. …
Just a year ago, Tencent Holdings Ltd. locked up one of the most coveted media franchises in the country when it paid $1.5 billion for five years of exclusive streaming rights to National Basketball Association games. A single tweet changed all that. Now, the Chinese social media giant may have to suspend airing those matchups — which drew half a billion viewers last year — after Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey triggered a media blackout in China by tweeting support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. That sums up a disappointing 2019 for a company that looked like it was back on track after a horrendous 2018.
China’s Tencent Sports suddenly halted …
China’s Tencent Sports suddenly halted the live broadcast of a key NBA game Saturday (Nov. 9) after a man seated in the front row of the audience was seen wearing clothes with a Taiwanese flag on them. The broadcaster declared that elements in the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat did not “correspond to broadcasting standards” without giving a further explanation.
At the time the broadcast was …
At the time the broadcast was suspended, an estimated 25 million people were watching the Lakers-Heat game, reports said, leading to many angry reactions online.
China’s heavy-handed response to an NBA …
China’s heavy-handed response to an NBA manager’s comments on the turbulent protests in Hong Kong represents a violation of U.S. sovereignty, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said during a panel event in the United Arab Emirates capital on Monday.
“When China says to the NBA, the …
“When China says to the NBA, the National Basketball Association, ‘your general manager cannot say something about what’s going on in Hong Kong’, now that’s a violation of American sovereignty, because Americans have the right to say what they please,” Rice told CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the annual Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (Adipec).