The National Basketball Association (NBA) has suffered major losses in China following Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong pro-freedom tweet, the competition’s commissioner Adam Silver has revealed.
Since the tweet from the Houston Rockets’ general manager earlier this month, all of the NBA’s Chinese partners suspended relations with the league, though the country’s digital platform Tencent did end its broadcast blackout on 13th October.
Silver has now said the league is “not only willing” to cope with the millions of dollars lost in revenue, but it already is.
Speaking at the Time 100 Health Summit, Silver said: “The losses have already been substantial. Our games are not back on the air in China as we speak, and we’ll see what happens next.”
“I don’t know where we go from here. The financial consequences have been and may continue to be fairly dramatic.”
Silver has also faced calls to fire Morey, but chose to once again publicly back the Rockets man.
“We made clear that we were being asked to fire him, by the Chinese government, by the parties we dealt with, government and business,” Silver said.
“We said there’s no chance that’s happening. There’s no chance we’ll even discipline him.”
In contrast, several other major companies with commercial ties to China have apologised to the country over the years following a variety of business faux pas.
This summer, for example, Italian fashion brand Versace released a shirt that listed Hong King and Macau as independent entities. Despite apologising and destroying the shirts, Versace’s Chinese brand ambassador, actress and singer Yang Mi, ended her relationship with the company.
In the face of mounting pressure from China, Silver also insisted the NBA would not give in to the demands, irrespective of the commercial hit the league will take.
“These American values — we are an American business — travel with us wherever we go,” he said. “And one of those values is free expression. We wanted to make sure that everyone understood we were supporting free expression.”
Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong pro-freedom tweet has cost the NBA millions in lost revenue.
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has suffered major losses in China following Daryl Morey’s Hong Kong pro-freedom tweet, the competition’s commissioner Adam Silver has revealed.
Since the tweet from the Houston Rockets’ general manager earlier this month, all of the NBA’s Chinese partners suspended relations with the league, though the country’s digital platform Tencent did end its broadcast blackout on 13th October.
Silver has now said the league is “not only willing” to cope with the millions of dollars lost in revenue, but it already is.
Speaking at the Time 100 Health Summit, Silver said: “The losses have already been substantial. Our games are not back on the air in China as we speak, and we’ll see what happens next.”
“I don’t know where we go from here. The financial consequences have been and may continue to be fairly dramatic.”
Silver has also faced calls to fire Morey, but chose to once again publicly back the Rockets man.
“We made clear that we were being asked to fire him, by the Chinese government, by the parties we dealt with, government and business,” Silver said.
“We said there’s no chance that’s happening. There’s no chance we’ll even discipline him.”
In contrast, several other major companies with commercial ties to China have apologised to the country over the years following a variety of business faux pas.
This summer, for example, Italian fashion brand Versace released a shirt that listed Hong King and Macau as independent entities. Despite apologising and destroying the shirts, Versace’s Chinese brand ambassador, actress and singer Yang Mi, ended her relationship with the company.
In the face of mounting pressure from China, Silver also insisted the NBA would not give in to the demands, irrespective of the commercial hit the league will take.
“These American values — we are an American business — travel with us wherever we go,” he said. “And one of those values is free expression. We wanted to make sure that everyone understood we were supporting free expression.”
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