NBA steps up its global plans to take basketball to new markets

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Washington Wizard’s Thomas Bryant (second right) shoots only to be Goaltending fouled for the winning points during the NBA London Game 2019 at the O2 Arena, London.

Washington edged the game on Thursday night by a single point, with the score finishing 101-100, but the trip was about more than what happened on the court.

Prior to the game Washington Wizards owner Ted Leonsis told CNBC that although the team was focused on the game “this is a business trip,” referencing the many sponsor and PR engagements in the team’s busy schedule.

“We’re hoping that one day Europe becomes a hotbed of basketball, just as China has become. We think that making those long-term investments are what we have to do as owners to pay back how great the league has been and how fast the league is growing,” Leonsis added.

The U.K. and Mexico have been the locations for regular season fixtures since 2011, but the NBA’s rapid rise in popularity across China has seen a huge amount of focus shift to growing the game from the Far East into other parts of Asia.

As revealed in CNBC’s new show “The Score,” the NBA’s Commissioner Adam Silver said “We realize the U.S. is a little less than four or five percent of the global population and we have a whole world out there that loves basketball and loves the NBA.”

According to figures produced by the NBA, over 300 million people play basketball in China, with more than double that number watching some part of its programming on television during the 2017/18 season. With 178 million followers across its Chinese social media channels, the NBA also boasts the highest following of any sports league in that particular market.

“Social media is a way we’ve been able to infiltrate those markets very quickly with young people in particular living on social media,” said Silver. “They’re following player’s individual feeds. Obviously Facebook is enormous in India and Instagram and these other services that feature the NBA to combine social media.”

The NBA distributes its games and programming in 215 countries and territories and in fifty languages. More than 30 percent of all its “NBA league pass” subscriptions are in Asia — offering fans access to on-demand content and the live streaming of games.