Ant Group’s logo is seen at the company’s headquarters on October 9, 2020 in Hangzhou, China’s Zhejiang province.
Dinh Tuan Hao | Chinese Visual Team | beautiful pictures
China’s fintech giant Ant Group said on Tuesday that it has established a strategic partnership with the NBA league in China, through which the two sides will cooperate in areas such as sports and content. video content, broadcasts, and memberships.
Fans in China will have access to NBA video content on Alipay, the hugely popular payment app owned by Ant Group, the company said in a statement.
Ant Group said the partnership with the business division of the Chinese professional basketball league will also cover areas such as joint marketing campaigns and digital collections.
NBA China last week launched a channel within Alipay that displays user-generated content from NBA China’s network of influencers and Alipay authorized content creators, Ant Group added. .
The NBA is one of the most popular US cultural exports to China and earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year from its presence in the Chinese market.
However, a decades-long partnership with state broadcaster CCTV broke down in October 2019 when then-Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey tweeted support for the widespread protests. Hong Kong, a Chinese-ruled city has been embroiled in a months-long political crisis. of anti-government protests.
Morey’s tweet, though quickly deleted, was strongly criticized in China and CCTV stopped showing NBA games immediately, resulting in an 18-month blackout.
Basketball fans in China are watching NBA games at levels close to the levels they watched before the 2019 rift. Reuters reported in Decembercited a source familiar with the tournament’s viewership data.
