NBA still missing from Chinese television screens, as 2021-22 season tips off

Basketball fans in China unable to watch NBA regular season games on state-owned broadcaster CCTV for third year running
Philadelphia 76ers also still absent from Tencent’s online streams, with lingering effects being felt from fallout of Daryl Morey tweet

NBA (National Basketball Association)

Jonathan White

Published: 7:00pm, 20 Oct 2021

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The new NBA season may have tipped off with a bang, as the champion Milwaukee Bucks beat the New Jersey Nets, and the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Golden State Warriors.

But neither of the season-opening games were shown on Chinese state television, where the NBA has largely remained absent from schedules since the end of the 2018-19 season.

CCTV has not listed any NBA games on its online schedule for the coming week, marking eight months since the station broadcast any action from the league, despite reports it would show last season’s All-Star Game in February.

In October 2019, CCTV pulled the plug on NBA coverage amid the fury surrounding a tweet posted by then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters.

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers reacts after scoring against the Golden State Warriors. Photo: AFP

Both CCTV and Tencent, which streams NBA games to Chinese basketball fans online, immediately ripped up plans to show the 2019-20 season, though Tencent eventually relented – for all teams bar the Rockets.

While the Rockets returned to Tencent streaming in January, the Philadelphia 76ers remain blacklisted, with fans only able to see photos and reports on games instead of livestreams. Morey moved to the 76ers last year after leaving his role at the Rockets.

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At the 2020 All-Star weekend, NBA commissioner Adam Silver told the press he thought NBA teams or Team USA would soon play in China again, but that was before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic,

The Lakers and the Nets had been in the country at the time of the tweet storm, as part of the NBA China Games. Their games in Shanghai and Shenzhen went ahead but were not shown by CCTV. No NBA teams have been back since, though Covid-19 has left China’s borders largely closed to overseas visitors.

The Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo defends the ball from the Brooklyn Nets' Blake Griffin. Photo: TNS

CCTV showed the final two games of the delayed 2019-20 NBA Finals, which were played out in a Covid-19 “bubble”, with LeBron James leading the Lakers to victory over the Miami Heat last October.

The broadcaster said it had decided to allow the NBA to return to screens a year on from Morey’s tweet, having received “good will messages” and Covid-19 support from the league.

There have been no games shown since, despite reports the NBA would be back on Chinese television screens in March following the All-Star break, with the whole of the last season absent from terrestrial broadcasts.

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The NBA has a long-running partnership dating back to the 1980s with Beijing-based CCTV, where broadcasts of games were a regular part of sports programming until the fallout from Morey’s tweet.

Tencent, the official digital partner of the league since 2009, signed a five-year extension in July 2019 which took its coverage through the 2024-25 season. The company first started streaming full games in 2015.

The NBA also signed a deal with short-video platform Kuaishou this week.