The growing tension between the United States and China puts the NBA in an awkward position.
President Trump's Executive Order Has Repercussions on NBA
The National Basketball Association is dealing with some collateral damage as President Trump’s executive order to ban U.S. businesses from working with the Chinese social media platform WeChat, due to concerns relating to national security. WeChat’s parent company is Tencent which owns the streaming rights to NBA games in China.
It is still unclear if all of Tencent’s U.S. based partners will be banned from conducting business or only those relating directly to WeChat. The NBA did confirm it has 1.4 million followers on the WeChat platform.
Outside of the United States, China is the most lucrative market for the professional basketball league with an estimated valuation of more than $5 billion according to CNBC. The NBA and Tencent signed a five year, $1.5 billion deal in July of 2019.
MLB Considering Bubble for Post-Season
The coronavirus outbreak for Major League Baseball teams including the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals has been well documented. Both teams were forced to postpone several of their regular season scheduled games and their previous opponents also had to make changes to their schedules after coming in contact with players from the Marlins and Cardinals.
To put it simply, it’s been a real bad look for the MLB and how they planned to handle the coronavirus.
According to ESPN, the MLB is having preliminary discussions to implement a bubble for their post-season, similar to what the NBA has done since they resumed action from Orlando.
The ESPN report indicates the MLB would possibly need to implement three bubble locations in order to host the 16 teams that make the playoffs. As it stands now, Major League is planning to have the top-seeded teams host all of the wild card round games to minimize travel. We’ll be keeping an eye on any news as this story continues to develop.
Daily Coronavirus and Business Update
There are over 20.1 million cases of the virus worldwide, with over 737,000 deaths. According to Johns Hopkins, the U.S. has surpassed 5.1 million cases with over 163,000 deaths.
According to the COVID-19 Tracking Project, there were 41,807 new cases reported Monday. 716,229 new tests were reported. And 426 deaths were reported yesterday.
Russia has become the first country in the world to formally approve a vaccine against the coronavirus. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday that Russia's health care regulator approved a Covid-19 vaccine, though the vaccine has yet to complete clinical trials and no information about any late-phase testing has been published. Speaking at a government meeting Tuesday, Putin said that the vaccine has undergone proper testing and is safe.
Putin said, “I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity, and I would like to repeat that it has passed all the necessary tests. We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world."
The World Health Organization says that a 'rigorous' review is needed for qualification.