Kobe Bryant.
Kobe Bryant? A lot of Kobe fans here in China.
I've watched the NBA since 20 years ago.
It’s eye-opening, and kind of surreal.
1.4 billion basketball-crazed people in a country and an economy that’s growing.
Thirty million viewers for the finals of the western conference last year,
it’s unbelievable the passion that people have for the sport and for the NBA in China.
I’ve come to the world’s most populous country where basketball has become big business.
The NBA’s fanbase here has grown massively,
and the league is opening experience stores and hosting preseason games.
But I want to find out how one of America’s most loved sports became the top sport in an unexpected country.
China is the most important international market for the NBA.
This is the 26th game to take place here,
but its success in this country didn’t happen overnight and it certainly wasn’t an accident.
More than half of China’s estimated 1.4 billion people
watched NBA programming on TV in the 2017-2018 season.
China’s become the biggest international market for NBA merchandise sales.
And the NBA is the most popular sports league on social media here,
reaching more than 100 million users across its accounts and boasting video streams in the billions.
If there’s a second center of the basketball universe, it’s China.
That’s Scott, he’s the CEO of the Philadelphia 76ers,
who’s brought his team over to the booming Chinese city, Shenzhen.
It’s all part of a preseason game to promote the NBA in China, where they’re playing the Dallas Mavericks.
The world is getting flatter and flatter, and smaller and smaller.
And having teenagers of my own, you can interchange someone from Shanghai
and Philadelphia, and just rotate them, and you wouldn't know the difference.
I mean, we listen to the same music, we watch the same basketball,
we follow the same trends, it’s pretty incredible.
The NBA started bringing teams here in 2004, in an effort to expand the game,
and now 17 teams have made it over.
But this is the first time the 76ers have played in China.
My favorite team is the Lakers, but today I like the six, six.
The Sixers, yeah, Philadelphia Sixers.
My favorite team is the Boston Celtics.
Boston Celtics, but you’re wearing a Dallas Mavericks jersey?
Because my boyfriend loves it.
Is this the boyfriend?
Yes.
So he made you put on the Mavericks jersey?
Yes.
There are only two preseason games taking place in China.
Here, and in Shanghai.
And given the sheer size of China’s population, the demand for tickets is high.
This couple came to see their first ever NBA game, and tell me they paid more than $300 per ticket.
And the knowledge of the fans here goes deep.
My favorite player is Kevin Garnett.
So I love Boston because it’s the first NBA championship of him.
Many fans I talk to, don’t just watch basketball. They play it, too.
It's good for my health.
According to the NBA, more than 300 million people play basketball in China.
I can play the basketball with my friends, it’s fun man, it’s really fun.
So how did basketball become so big here?
In 1979 the Washington Bullets became the first U.S. professional sports team to visit China.
The trip took place just months after President Carter moved to establish more favorable relations with China.
We’ve had a long-term view.
We’ve been here since the 80s thanks to David Stern and his persistence. It’s not an accident.
In the late 80s, David Stern, the NBA’s then-commissioner
met with China’s state-run television network, CCTV, making deals to get the games on air.
Fast forward to 1994, when China’s central broadcasting network aired every game of the NBA Finals,
the first time all seven games had been shown live in China.
Eight years later, Yao Ming was drafted by the Houston Rockets.
This was a big deal for propelling the NBA’s growth in China.
Ming was born in Shanghai and had a natural following in China.
His first game he played against Shaquille O’Neal and the Lakers,
garnered more than 200 million viewers in China.
That same year, the NBA opened an office in Beijing. From there, things really took off.
The first NBA game in China took place in 2004. And in 2008, NBA China was officially founded.
In 2014, NBA China and the Chinese Ministry of Education
partnered to grow basketball in elementary and middle schools across the country.
Now, more than four million students are participating in classes using the curriculum they developed together.
And in 2016, Lizhang Jiang bought a stake in the Minnesota Timberwolves
making him the first Chinese owner of an NBA team.
The NBA formed deals with some of China’s biggest tech companies, and in order to truly understand
the Chinese market, you first have to understand the importance of the mobile phone.
When you look at the U.S. fan versus the Chinese fan, what is the key difference?
A Chinese fan has to watch in the morning and the American fan watches at night.
This is Derek, he’s the CEO of NBA China.
And China is known as a mobile-first market.
People can watch them on their mobile phones very easily and that's what they do and they interact with it.
And to see the amount of traffic that's going on, not just in terms of the viewing of a game,
but on social media, we have close to 150 million social media followers in China alone.
In 2015 NBA formed a deal with Tencent, one of China’s largest internet companies.
The deal, which is reportedly worth at least $500 million,
allows Tencent to carry games, highlights and more on its platforms.
And this meant even bigger reach for the NBA.
That’s because Tencent is the owner of WeChat, which now boasts more than one billion monthly active users.
Meanwhile Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging platform
has more than 400 million monthly active users.
The NBA’s deal with Weibo allows it to deliver game highlights,
player interviews, photos, stats, and behind the scenes events.
Just take a look at Jeremy Lin. He’s considered China’s most popular current NBA player online.
I say current because, well, Kobe Bryant is actually the most followed NBA star.
He may have retired, but his legacy lives on here.
This social media surge in popularity of the NBA, the teams, and players
is prompting some to step up the way they market themselves in China.
The connectedness is understood by Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Markelle Fultzz and Dario Saric.
They have Weibo accounts, they have WeChat accounts.
That’s the way to connect with fans one on one and gives us such a competitive advantage
for an organization like the Philadelphia 76ers, cause we create content
and we can get wide and distribute it really quickly and through a lot of different ways.
In fact, Scott tells me he’s hiring Mandarin-speaking Chinese staff.
He hopes to have up to six new employees that will distribute content across Chinese networks.
It’s a cultural revolution, and the Chinese fans seem to be very interested in what is new,
what is interesting and what is relevant, and NBA players are new, interesting and relevant.
It’s important to note that China isn’t the only place where the NBA is operating outside of the U.S.
The NBA says it considers itself an international organization already.
25% of NBA players are international. It has offices in 13 markets worldwide.
And more than 60% of NBA digital visitors are actually coming from outside North America.
It’s just that China is proving to be just too lucrative to not prioritize.
Everyone knows how important this place is, and how important these people are to the game.
Kemba Walker is a player for the Charlotte Hornets. He’s come to China for a few days to promote the game.
I met him in Beijing at a new NBA Playzone store.
It’s one of several that have recently opened up in China,
with the aim of bringing the NBA experience to a younger crowd.
It’s located inside a mall, and this is the second one to open inside China.
If you want to come inside, it’ll cost about $25 for one adult and one child for a day pass.
But there’s also annual passes available as well,
which gives you unlimited access to playing basketball and a variety of other games,
that are meant to completely immerse you inside the experience of the NBA.
He likes James very much.
I met this NBA fan who’s brought his five- year-old son to the event to meet Walker.
If you don’t really get a chance to come out here, you wouldn’t really understand how much
they love the game of basketball and how much respect they have for basketball.
So how will it continue to grow?
It’s just a very compelling product right now, between the media that we have, a lot of the social media we have,
opening things like PlayZone, we continue to take the brand and bring it frankly to our fans.
Chang says he hopes to eventually expand Playzone stores globally.
While the admission fee to come inside certainly isn’t cheap,
it’s hard to imagine the NBA will generate sizeable profits from the Playzone stores.
But that might not be the point, either.
After all, the benefit of exposing someone at a young age and possibly acquiring a lifelong fan,
could be worth way more in the long run.
How big can it get?
It can be huge. There’s definitely a lot of opportunities,
it’s only getting bigger, it's only going to get bigger and better from here.
Yeah, it will.