The National Basketball Association is not resting on its laurels despite reaching an audience of more than 600 million people in China.
Tencent to distribute NBA content on the Chinese tech giant’s channels.
“Tencent has been a phenomenal partner,” Chang said. “They have invested significantly in the product … in our brand, in the league.”
But it doesn’t stop there. The NBA has already been looking at other possible distribution platforms.
Last year, the league partnered with other tech companies such as Bytedance, China Mobile and Alibaba to “test what the capabilities of each of these platforms are,” Chang said.
“The landscape changes so quickly,” he added, with the distribution landscape being fragmented at present.
“If you’re not kind of present, you may be gone in 5 years,” he cautioned.
Commenting on whether to make its content available for free, or putting it behind a paywall, Chang said it’s about “finding that right balance” and “making sure you’re not just trying to … monetize for the sake of monetization but really to grow, sort of, the sport.”
At the same time, he acknowledged, some of the league’s team owners paid a “significant amount of money for their team,” making it difficult to ignore the commercial aspect of the business.
— CNBC’s Uptin Saiidi contributed to this report.
Source:CNBC
