Opinion | Basketball diplomacy: How Australia’s league hopes to entice Chinese fans away from the NBA
Exhibition games, live streaming in Mandarin and by next year a ‘Chinese-influenced’ team all on the agenda for Aussie’s NBL
It’s not the only sporting organisation trying to get a foothold among China’s potentially huge market – but the chief of Australia’s National Basketball League hopes it has some key advantages.
An NBL All-Star team will play China’s national team in Beijing, Jilin and Dongguan on July 5, 7 and 9, with all three games broadcast on Fox Sports in Australia. Team China will then take on Melbourne United and the Brisbane Bullets Down Under as they prepare for the Asia Cup in August.
It’s all part of a masterplan that NBL chief executive Jeremy Loeliger hopes will see the Aussie game take off among China’s army of basketball fans.
The sport is generally reckoned to be the most popular in the country, but right now it’s the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) and America’s NBA that dominate.
But with former NBA Hall-of-Famer Yao Ming now in charge of the previously haplessly run CBA, Loeliger believes there’s huge opportunities for China and Australia to work together; he even aims to have a ‘Chinese’ team in the NBL by next year.
