Tencent announced that it has suspended all coverage of the Houston Rockets in response to a Tweet sent by the team’s general manager, Daryl Morey, who expressed support for Hong Kong protesters fighting for democracy and independence from the Chinese government. Morey posted an image to Twitter on Friday that included the slogan “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” The tweet was quickly deleted after Morey was criticized on Twitter by the Rockets’ owner, Tilman Fertitta.
The NBA’s rights holder in China is offering fans who purchased a single-team pass to watch Rockets games the opportunity to “switch teams” now that Rockets games will not be shown in the country, according to Chinese journalist Yu Fu.
The Rockets are one of the most popular NBA teams in China because of Yao Ming, who had a Hall of Fame career in Houston. Yao is now the president of the Chinese Basketball Association, which announced it would suspend its relationship with the Rockets.
In July, the NBA signed a five-year, $1.5 billion extension with Tencent. According to the league, 500 million fans watched games on Tencent platforms last season. A number of NBA executives issued statements distancing themselves from Morey’s pro-democracy Tweet, including recently installed Brooklyn Nets owner and Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai. Described by The New York Times as a “Taiwanese-born billionaire,” Tsai called the protesters in Hong Kong a “separatist movement.”
As part of the geopolitical fallout, the NBA has faced backlash for doing business with China and for equivocating its way through this controversy—on the one hand affirming Morey’s right to speak freely about his beliefs while doing business with a notoriously repressive government.
“While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them,” NBA chief communications officer Mike Bass said in a statement posted on the Chinese social media website Weibo. The NBA, according to the New York Post, also acknowledged that Morey’s views “have deeply offended many of our friends and fans in China, which is regrettable.”
“There is no doubt, the economic impact is already clear,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver told Kyodo News. “There have already been fairly dramatic consequences from that tweet, and I have read some of the media suggesting that we are not supporting Daryl Morey, but in fact we have.”
