NBA considering Saturday morning tip-offs to accommodate Chinese market

NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league is considering a major scheduling change that would benefit the league's growing audience in China.

Silver joined Bloomberg's Stephanie Ruhle and Cory Johnson at the Bloomberg Sports Business Summit Thursday and told them morning tip-offs are a possibility:

“I think the biggest challenge [to growing the game internationally] is the time zone differences. I mean, for example, in China, roughly 12 hours different from the East Coast. So prime time games are on early in the morning, so you have to figure out whether we need to create new products, condensed games that are shown later, whether it becomes a business of highlights, whether it’s equivalent to tweets and other forms of social media.

I think that’s sort of — part of the biggest challenge. I mean, ultimately, whether we should consider time-shifting some of our games. Once the audience becomes big enough, maybe it’s not so crazy to ask a team once every two months to play a Saturday morning game….

Yes, maybe when the audience gets big enough and you’re reaching 100 million people in China to say so maybe once in a while a team will play at 10:00 on Saturday morning.”

While that is still a long way off, Silver said, a more realistic short-term goal would be partnering with the Chinese Basketball Association.

[H/T Pro Basketball Talk]