Sports. How China decides what we watch and play
Table of Contents
Boy, oh boy. For starters, we’ll see a brief example of how money breaks your moral backbone. Enter Daryl Morey, the CEO of the most popular American team in China (until recently) – Houston Rockets. He logs in to Twitter and writes the following:
Fight for freedom. Stay with Hong Kong.
Oh, Daryl, if you only knew... Houston Rockets has Chinese sponsors. Well, I mean – they used to. They're all gone now. When there was a threat of a suspension of NBA broadcasting in China, Morey had to start explaining. That’s because more viewers watched NBA in China than in the entire USA. And that meant serious cash.
Now it's time to move on to the part so awful and absurd that it's ridiculous. A crisis management team adept in extinguishing propaganda scandals was clearly involved in containing the situation. First of all, Daryl Morey has issued a bunch of tweets, which contained some explanations concerning the incident. Then, some NBA players were asked to give orchestrated, smooth interviews, preferably consisting of a single, prearranged question. Morey ended up denying that his intention was to insult devoted fans from China, and he assured that he had learned about the point of view of the other side of the conflict. Then, he assured that his earlier statement was not representative of the views of the entire NBA – that it was merely an individual opinion. Sound familiar? Blizzard wrote almost the exact same thing.
In turn, James Harden assured the world media (including Chinese) that he and his colleagues totally love China and Chinese fans – and that the feeling was mutual.
The matter has stirred the US public opinion so much that NBA was forced to tone it down and admit there are more important things in life than money. Considering the freedom of speech, the NBA is not going to apologize for the director's individual statement. Outcome? By the decision of Tencent, no more NBA broadcasts (or streams) in the PRC. Chinese sponsors have since withdrawn from supporting the league.
Is the NBA pop culture? Well:
