Chinese basketball bosses planning direct rival to East Asia Super League, want CBA and Hong Kong clubs involved
- Hong Kong Eastern welcomes initiative, which is being backed by East Asia Basketball Association
- Rival outfit has already held talks with Japan’s B League, hoping to bring Korea and Taiwan on board
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Basketball officials in China are planning to launch a rival regional competition to the East Asia Super League, and hope to convince clubs on the mainland and in Hong Kong to sign up.
The city’s only professional team, Hong Kong Eastern, told the Post it was “extremely interested” in being part of the new project, which has been dubbed the Rising East Asia League.
Jay Li Jintian, whose previous experience includes international business development with the NBA, as well as strategy and teams operations with the Chinese Basketball Association, is heading up the project.
The initiative falls under the auspices of the East Asia Basketball Association, a sub-section of Fiba Asia, which is currently chaired by former NBA star Yao Ming.
Li said the plan was to look at the present state of competition in the region and assess what could “be done to help develop the basketball ecosystem in the region in a bigger and better way”.
“East Asia is an exciting basketball market as well as a region of huge economic growth potential, and the prospect is interesting, to say the least,” he said.
Any new league would be in direct competition with the EASL, which includes teams from the Philippines, Korea, Japan and Taiwan, as well as the Hong Kong-based Bay Area Dragons.
The EASL completed its first Champions Week tournament in Japan last month, and Matt Beyer, the league’s CEO, said the first full season was expected to start on October 11.
Li said the rival organisation’s goal would be to form a sustainable league that “truly benefits and represents the region” and compared their approach to that of the Basketball Africa League, which was launched by the NBA and Fiba, the game’s governing body, in 2021.
He claimed that the new project would be driven by China reopening to international competitions, and getting the country to be part of the project “was crucial”.
In a recent trip to Beijing, Shinji Shimada, chairman of Japan’s B League, reportedly agreed to deepen exchanges between the CBA and his organisation.
Sources told the Post that Shimada and Yao had some “fruitful” conversations, before watching the Beijing Ducks thrash the Jiangsu Dragons 123-92 in a league match on April 5.
Shimada, who is also the vice-chairman of the Japanese Basketball Association, was said to have welcomed the idea of having the CBA’s involvement in a potential new league in the region.
Li’s plan appears to be a direct copy of the EASL model, with an eight team league, featuring sides from mainland China, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong or Macau, playing in a home and away format, starting next year.
Even a proposed final four has a familiar feel to it, with organisers looking at staging a tournament in cities in the region.
“The Kai Tak Sports Park is among the long list of venues we are looking at,” Li said. “I want to make it an experience similar to that of the Hong Kong Sevens for basketball fans around the region.”
“It is a good way to promote Hong Kong as a world city,” Wilson Choi Fong-yue, the team leader, said. “Globalisation is a trend and East Asia’s geographical location is an advantage.
“It is an uprising region, and with the huge basketball fan base we have in the city, as well as in the region, I am not worried by the number of spectators attending the games on a regular basis.”
