NBA looks to play regular season matches in China

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, September 26, 2003

NBA looks to play regular season matches in China

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With pre-season games set to debut in China next year, the National Basketball Association (NBA) would also consider to move regular season matches in Beijing as they continue to explore the Chinese market.

Mark Fischer, managing director of NBA Asia in China, told Xinhua on Thursday that they are also likely to move some regular season matches to China if "everything goes well".

Fischer, who is in Beijing for the Sept. 19-Oct. 5 Coca-Cola NBA Jam Session debuts in China, believed it was going to happen very soon.

"A couple of years later, probably after two or three years at the pre-season (level)...," he said.

He also said it would partly depend on gyms in China since the regular season matches demand high-quality courts and facilities.

NBA Commissioner David Stern announced on June 2 that the China NBA Games 2004 would see two pre-season matches between Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings take place in Beijing and Shanghai in October next year.

Before the regular season matches coming into China, NBA wants to make the NBA China Games an annual global festa.

"If it's successful in 2004, if we sell out the tickets, the sponsors are happy, local partners, the Beijing and Shanghai Sports Bureau, the teams and everybody is happy, then we do it again in 2005," said Fischer.

"We hope it could be every year, but we have to do first is to ensure everything goes well.

"As long as everything works great, we are going to keep doing it and it'll come as a very exciting annual event that not only everybody in China but also the whole world would get excited about NBA China Games."

A recent NBA survey showed that 75 percent of the male Chinese aged 15 to 24 were NBA fans. Since NBA programming first appeared on Chinese Central Television (CCTV) in 1987, it has now reached 314 million television households in the country.

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