During a ceremony at center court of Barclays Center, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Tencent President Martin Lau today celebrated the groundbreaking partnership that has made Tencent the NBA's exclusive official digital partner in China.
Silver presented Lau with an All-Star jersey and in return received Tencent mascot figurine from Mr. Lau at center court before the tip-off of State Farm All-Star Saturday Night, which featured the Sprite®Slam Dunk, Foot Locker Three-Point Contest, Taco Bell® Skills Challenge and Degree® Shooting Stars. Some of the league's top players headline this year's participants, including Stephen Curry, the leading vote-getter in NBA All-Star Balloting 2015 presented by Sprint, as well as fellow All-Stars Chris Bosh, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Kyle Lowry, Paul Millsap, Jeff Teague, Klay Thompson, and Russell Westbrook.
NBA and Tencent announced the league's largest international digital partnership on Jan. 29, 2015. Under the agreement, Tencent will feature a record number of live NBA games and deliver enhanced original NBA programming and highlights to hundreds of millions of daily users across Tencent platforms. The new partnership will be effective on July 1, 2015.
About the NBA
The NBA is a global sports and media business built around three professional sports leagues: the National Basketball Association, the Women's National Basketball Association, and the NBA Development League. The league has established a major international presence with offices in 13 markets worldwide, games and programming in 215 countries and territories in 47 languages, and NBA merchandise for sale in more than 125,000 stores in 100 countries on 6 continents. NBA rosters at the start of the 2014-15 season featured a record 101 international players from 37 countries and territories. NBA Digital's assets include NBA TV, which is available in 60 million U.S. homes, and NBA.com, which recorded 26.9 billion page views during the 2013-14 season, with more than half of all visitors originating from outside of North America. The NBA is the No. 1 professional sports league on social media, with more than 750 million likes and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms. Through NBA Cares, the league and its teams and players have donated more than $242 million to charity, completed more than 3 million hours of hands-on community service, and created more than 915 places where kids and families can live, learn, or play.
About Tencent
Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Every day, hundreds of millions of people communicate, share experiences, consume information and seek entertainment through our integrated platforms. Tencent's diversified services include QQ and Weixin/WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com and Tencent News for information, and Tencent Video for premium video content.
Tencent was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The Company is one of the 50 constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Tencent seeks to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a hospitable environment for partners, and staying close to users.