The entire New Orleans Pelicans team, including players and coaches, participated in an NBA Cares event on Tuesday in Beijing, China, on the penultimate day of their Global Games trip to Asia. This overseas preseason trip is the first for New Orleans since 2008, when the club played games in Berlin and Barcelona. During Tuesday’s community event at a Beijing school, Pelicans.com caught up with David Shoemaker, the CEO of NBA China, to discuss the broader background of the team’s visit to China and the league’s rampant popularity in the nation.
Pelicans.com: Over the past 10 to 20 years, how much of a difference have you seen in how popular the NBA has become in China?
Shoemaker: It’s hard to even put it into perspective. You’ve now spent almost a week in China, so I’m sure you’ve gotten a sense of the metrics and measurements of how popular the game is. There are 765 million in China who watched at least one NBA game (last season). So if you took the 1.4 billion people who live in China, more than half watched a game. The NBA has well over 100 million followers on social media here. That’s not just bigger than any other sport – it’s bigger than any other company or brand or effort out there. We have 21 marketing partners and our merchandise business is thriving. Our television, digital and all media content is all heavily consumed. The appetite to see more and grow more is out there. The thing is, it hasn’t happened overnight. Chinese people have been playing basketball for 120 years, with missionaries bringing the game here in the 1890s. At the Pelicans-Rockets game Wednesday, we will celebrate 30 years of Chinese Central Television broadcasting NBA games here. There is no question that Yao Ming being drafted led to a spike in interest, but even after his career ended in 2011, the game has continued to soar in popularity. Our business has continued to rise. It’s been a fun ride.
Pelicans.com: Earlier in the week, Pelicans guard Buddy Hield was a guest at an event held in the first-ever NBA Play Zone, which was built in Shanghai. As you know, the NBA Play Zone is a unique kind of playground/themed activity facility, geared for children who love basketball and the league. What was the genesis of that idea?
Shoemaker: It’s the first of its kind anywhere in the world. We’re building a second one in Beijing that will be ready around March, and a third soon after. The plan is to have them all over China. The broader plan is that if they are as successful as we think they will be in China, we’ll grow them around the world and see them everywhere. The basis of it was that there are unique preferences here in China, because fans here do not get to touch the game the way our fans in the United States and Canada do. Fans in China don’t really get to buy a ticket and go to a game, unless they have wealth and can travel (to North America), so we like to connect with fans in different ways. Our young fans here are engaged to love the game of basketball from an early age.
Pelicans.com: In general, what are some of the effects you’ve seen on NBA teams like the Pelicans after they come to China?
Shoemaker: The trip to China has a lot of different impacts on teams who’ve come here. When it first started happening, coming to China was a relatively unknown thing around the league. The idea of traveling this far in the preseason, when teams are beginning to get pretty serious about cutting down the roster and thinking ahead to the regular season, it was a little hard for people to digest. It’s completely the opposite now. Now when we plan out the games on a two-year horizon – right now, we’re working on 2018 – half the league is volunteering to come and play in China. Many of them are teams that have been here before, because they’ve had the experience and have seen what it does for the popularity of their brands, usually in the form of social media. It also creates immediate commercial opportunities – for example, Chinese companies are partnering back in the local market of NBA teams. So it wouldn’t surprise me, for example, to see Chinese companies buying sponsorships back in New Orleans on the heels of this trip.
Pelicans.com: What about the impact on individual NBA players?
Shoemaker: It’s become increasingly important for players’ brands to be seen and be active in China. One great example was that when Anthony Davis re-signed with the Pelicans (in 2015), he did so in Hong Kong. I think it was not by coincidence that he did that, and it created incredible attention in this part of the world.
Pelicans.com: What made it attractive for the Pelicans to be part of a China trip, as well as for them to be chosen by the NBA to do so?
Shoemaker: For a team to be considered, it first requires that they express interest. Ownership was behind it and has been very active in saying they want to build the Pelicans brand outside their local market and outside the United States. It definitely didn’t hurt that the Pelicans were a playoff team (in 2015) and on the rise. That’s was part of our thought process, that it was a very fun team, with star power, a good team in the Western Conference. We also measure how much interest the fans and media here in China will have in a team. Put it all together, and there was a good appetite to see the Pelicans come, so here we are.
