Beijing - While China increasingly is considered an economic threat to the US, the National Basketball Association (NBA) is not seeing an opponent in the world's most populous nation, but a growth opportunity.
Though China's claim of having 300 million basketball players - as much as the entire population of the US - seems quite exaggerated, no one doubts that the sport is becoming increasingly popular in the communist country.
Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets star from Shanghai has helped to spread NBA basketball into every corner of China with his image dominating billboards, soft drinks and other products all over the country.
Of 15- to 24 year-olds in China, with a population of 1.3 billion, 83 per cent consider themselves NBA fans, a huge advertisement base for all sorts for consumer products.
The growing popularity of basketball is also evident in the fact that already 20 per cent of traffic to the website NBA.com, which offers a Mandarin version, is from China.
Games are broadcast on China's 51 TV stations, and if the viewers want to sport a team's colours NBA merchandise is available to fans in more than 50,000 locations, according to the league.
The league maintains marketing partnerships in China with 20 of the world's leading brands.
To push even further into the Chinese market the NBA has set up a Chinese subsidiary and head-hunted one of the most prolific businessmen in China, Tim Chen, to lead the franchise.
The longtime Motorola executive in China and chief executive officer of Microsoft China for the past four years, Chen was picked Wednesday (September 19) to establish a Chinese NBA league, in cooperation with the existing domestic basketball league, run by the Chinese Basketball Association.
'The NBA is a truly exceptional brand with a huge fan base that reaches across all parts of China,' said the Taiwanese-born Chen, who lives with his wife and two children in Beijing.
'I'm thrilled by the scope of this opportunity and the ability to work with such a talented team, as we build on the enormous business potential that spans media, merchandising, marketing, events and new initiatives.'
To net Chen for the job is a coup by the NBA as his experience working closely with the Chinese government and business community for many years will no doubt come into play.
However, coordinating central and provincial governments, the Chinese Basketball Association, sports officials, investors and sponsors as well as broadcasters together with the NBA to form their own Chinese basketball league following the US model may be more than the businessman bargained for.
Chen will start his new job effectively on October 15, NBA Commissioner David Stern announced.
'Tim Chen is a proven business leader who has guided the dramatic growth of two Fortune 100 businesses in China,' said Stern.
'Tim is the ideal person to lead NBA China as we expand our infrastructure and operations to meet the growing interest from fans and consumers throughout the region.'
NBA China will be a new enterprise being created to encapsulate all of the league's businesses in Greater China.
The board of directors will include NBA owners, representatives of outside investors as well as Stern, and Heidi Ueberroth, NBA president of global marketing partnerships and international business operations
'After an extensive search that produced many qualified candidates, Tim Chen was the clear choice based on his tremendous experience and accomplishments,' Ueberroth said.
Chen, who worked for AT&T in the US before joining Motorola, couldn't help but be a basketball fan, having lived in Chicago during the dominating reign of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls.
He will start with 80 staff in the NBA greater China offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taiwan - just in time for a jump start ahead of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing in August.
The NBA is conducting more than 170 special events in 112 cities in Greater China including the NBA China Games 2007, three pre-season games in Shanghai and Macao in October.
On October 17, in Shanghai, the Cleveland Cavaliers will play the Orlando Magic, who will also play against the Chinese national team the next day.
The Cleveland Cavaliers and Orlando Magic can also be seen in Macao in the Venetian Macao Resort, the just-opened world's biggest casino in the former Portuguese enclave that fell back under Chinese sovereignty in 1999.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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