Tencent Renews Partnership With NBA Until 2025

China’s tech giant Tencent renewed its partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to provide Chinese basketball fans with services such as live-streams, on-demand videos and short videos until 2025, as announced on July 29.

“Tencent is irreplaceable for NBA’s development in China,” said NBA president Adam Silver, “Tencent has a huge user base and various popular platforms, which are vital to basketball’s development. Through this continuous partnership, we look forward to strengthening our connection with Chinese fans.”

They will expand their cooperation in new areas, such as innovative advertisements and the NBA fans mini program on WeChat. Tencent will continue using its core capacities and years of experience in operating consumer businesses to expand NBA’s fan base in China and to provide more personalized services.

“We will use our advantages in multiple platforms, shared content and new technologies to better serve Chinese basketball fans with quality sports content and continuous experience innovation,” said Tencent president Martin Lau.

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Tencent’s relationship with NBA began in 2015, when the two companies signed a five-year contract. Tencent started using its mobile and PC digital media platforms to live stream and produce original content in every season for Chinese fans. The two also cooperated on NBA games, social media and off-line activities.

Tencent proved to be a strong ally for NBA by increasing its audience ratings. In the past year, 490 million fans watched NBA live-streams and videos through Tencent platforms, tripling the number in 2014-15 NBA season. Tencent also managed to attract the highest number of watchers of a single NBA event on any Chinese digital media platform, which is 21 million during the sixth of the finals in 2018-19 season.