00:03Well, it's a big deal because China, for the NBA, is actually a $5 billion business.
00:10So it's definitely the largest and most important market for the NBA outside of the U.S.
00:15Now, basketball is actually perhaps the most populous sport in China.
00:20According to a report by S&P Global, actually over half of Chinese Internet users actually watch the NBA.
00:27And just to give a little bit of context of why this relationship soured to begin with,
00:32is that because back in 2019, the general manager for the Houston Rockets at the time,
00:37he posted a tweet in support of the pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.
00:42And as you can imagine, the backlash was pretty major.
00:45We saw sponsors cutting ties.
00:48We saw state television, CCTV stopping the broadcast of the games.
00:53And even Tencent even stopped the live streams.
00:56And so there was so much at stake at the moment.
00:59And I was actually in Shanghai in 2019.
01:02And I even saw, like, banners of NBA being pulled down from the buildings.
01:06And so Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, he actually said because of all of this,
01:11quote, hundreds of millions of dollars were actually lost because of this.
01:15And so when I was speaking with Mark Dreher, he was an expert in the Chinese sports industry,
01:20he was saying that essentially the NBA had to return to China because the Chinese market was simply too big to ignore.
01:29So, Adrian, what's the NBA been doing?
01:32How's it trying to rebuild its brand in China?
01:34Right. So there's been a lot of behind-the-scenes talks just over the years trying to mend that relationship.
01:42And it's actually interesting that it's being played in Macau because usually these games are played in the big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
01:49And experts that I've been talking to, they're essentially saying that Macau was really seen as, like, a testing ground
01:57before it really fully returns back to the mainland.
02:00And it was essentially a safe choice for the NBA to play the games over there.
02:04And they've signed quite a big deal with Sanz China, who is doing the games.
02:09And CCTV, they've actually eventually resumed playing the games on TV about two and a half years after the initial fallout.
02:18And just from the NBA side, they've sent the likes of LeBron James and Steph Curry, as you can see there,
02:23going back to China, which drew thousands of fans, really.
02:27And even when Curry was in Chongqing, he was welcomed with such an extravagant drone show.
02:32But even on the flip side, Antisports, they have the largest sportswear company in China.
02:39They've even signed the likes of Kyrie Irving for some deals.
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