NBA Broadcasts Returning to Chinese TV After More Than Year

(Bloomberg) -- Basketball is coming back to Chinese TV.

China Central Television will revive its coverage of the National Basketball Association on Saturday, just in time for Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat, the network said in a late-night sports news program on Friday.

The network, which holds exclusive rights for the NBA in China, stopped showing the league’s games after Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for protesters in Hong Kong in October 2019.

Resuming the broadcast is “a normal arrangement” as basketball is a popular sport in China and there’s a demand from fans to watch the games, an unidentified spokesperson for the network said in a separate statement on Friday night.

“During the recent Chinese National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, the NBA sent their well wishes to fans in China,” the statement reads, adding that the league had shown kindness by making efforts to support Chinese people during the Covid-19 outbreak.

The NBA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Commissioner Adam Silver said in February that the league stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars from the blackout.

“I think that the magnitude of the loss will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars,” Silver said. “Probably less than $400 million, maybe even less than that.”

The controversy over Morey’s tweet also spilled over into the political arena. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican, has engaged in online spats with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban about the league’s stance toward China and the Hong Kong protests.

LeBron James, the NBA’s biggest star, was widely criticized for calling Morey’s support for the protests “misinformed,” and “not educated about the situation.”

James, in turn, was called hypocritical by Joshua Wong, a leader of the Hong Kong protests, for his stance on China while promoting democratic causes and racial justice in the U.S.

Some people in China took to social media to express their dissatisfaction with the network’s decision, saying Morey, Silver and the NBA have yet to apologize about the incident.

CCTV’s sports channel called the incident a “sovereignty issue” in a comment in May, saying there is “absolutely no room for maneuvering.” Many Weibo users reposted the comments and called the turnabout a “face-losing” move that disregarded national pride.

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