Chinese fintech giant Ant Group is joining hands with the US National Basketball Association (NBA) to launch a “comprehensive strategic collaboration” in China in the latest move to elevate the sport in one of its biggest markets outside the US. The marketing partnership, which was jointly announced by Ant Group and NBA China on Tuesday, will see the two parties create original online content and a customised consumer experience on Ant’s mobile payments platform Alipay through technologies such as blockchain, according to a press release on Ant’s official website. Ant Group is an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, which also owns the South China Morning Post. NBA China, which is responsible for managing all of the league’s businesses in the country, was formed in January 2008 after its first office opened in Hong Kong in 1992. Under the deal, NBA fans in China will have access to the NBA’s video content on Alipay for the first time and services such as joint memberships, an NBA mini-program, joint marketing campaigns and digital collectibles. Former NBA star Lin taking talents to Taiwan, signs with Kaohsiung Steelers “Bringing NBA’s high-quality content and engaged content creators onto our platform is an important step for Alipay to embrace the content ecosystem as an open platform,” said Ni Xingjun, chief technology officer of Ant Group and chairman of Alipay, adding that the company hopes to “build a young digital interactive platform for NBA fans in China and bring in new services and interactions in sports in the digital era”. The NBA has a long-running partnership dating back to the 1980s with Beijing-based CCTV. Deemed as one of the most popular US cultural exports in China, it once racked up hundreds of millions of dollars every year as a regular part of CCTV’s sports programming. The league, however, has in recent years faced mounting challenges in terms of its relationship with China. A tweet in 2019 by then-Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey expressed support for Hong Kong’s anti-government protesters, with NBA head Adam Silver backing Morey’s freedom of expression. That stance triggered a huge backlash from nationalists in mainland China and led to the NBA China Games being dropped from China state broadcaster CCTV and its online streaming partner Tencent Holdings. Tencent later resumed streaming of the sport and the state broadcaster softened its stance due to “goodwill messages” it had received from the NBA since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, CCTV only resumed broadcasts of NBA games in March 2022, apart from the one-off showing of the NBA Finals in October 2020. China’s foreign minister Qin Gang speaks at NBA game The latest deal signals a further revival of the NBA’s fortunes in China. In October 2021, the NBA also announced it had signed up Kuaishou Technology as its “official short video platform and video content creation community” in China under a multi-year strategic partnership. Last week, NBA China launched a channel on Alipay with a range of user-generated content created by NBA China’s influencers and Alipay’s authorised content creators, according to the press release. “The NBA is always seeking to embrace innovative technology,” said NBA China CEO Michael Ma. “We have a common vision with Ant Group, which is to bring rich and high-quality content services and consumer experience to fans through digital services, blockchain technology and other user-friendly technologies.”