Ten days after the New York Knicks paraded through lower Manhattan, the NBA made a decision that is subtly telling. Instead of enjoying the national attention that comes with a new champion, the league took flights to Singapore. It organized a regional strategy meeting, a Rising Stars competition, and an investor conference. That choice wasn’t made by chance.
For many years, Asia has been a challenging topic for the NBA. In the past, China appeared to be the clear solution to all of the league’s revenue-related queries. Then came 2019, a single tweet about Hong Kong, and years of broadcaster pullouts and sponsor withdrawals that no one in the league offices wants to go into further detail about. The injuries took time to heal. The bond is being reestablished. However, Southeast Asia subtly emerged as something worth observing on its own terms amidst that chaos.
In just three years, the number of fans in the area has increased by 15%. NBA Asia’s social media platforms saw an 88% annual increase in video views. In just the 2025–26 season, the number of regional followers for the league almost doubled. These are the kinds of figures that make merchandise directors sit up straight during quarterly reviews; they are not vanity metrics.
But what’s really intriguing about this is how unevenly the commercial opportunity has been seized thus far. In the Philippines, basketball is the most popular sport, with 63% of the population following the NBA. Despite having NBA teams, this penetration rate is twice that of Canada. The number of young people in Indonesia who are learning the game is growing quickly. It seems that basketball is the most popular team sport in Singapore. However, that business hasn’t even come close to matching those engagement numbers in terms of merchandise revenue, licensed clothing, or the replica jerseys displayed in malls from Jakarta to Manila.
Japan is a completely different story. Since 1988, the NBA has been broadcast on television there. The Wizards and Warriors were invited to play preseason games. It features Rui Hachimura, a real Japanese celebrity who worked for years on a franchise with a loyal fan base. Even so, only about 6% of Japanese people consider professional basketball to be their favorite sport.
There, baseball and soccer maintain their cultural superiority in ways that are difficult to overcome. There’s a sense that the NBA is aware of Japan’s worth, is aware that it hasn’t fully grasped it, and keeps coming back, in part due to stubbornness and in part because of sincere belief.
Recently, Jeremy Lin visited Singapore to watch the Rising Stars competition. It’s important to bring that up for context rather than nostalgia. When Linsanity broke out in 2012, it did more than just sell jerseys; it showed how one relatable person could affect a whole region’s emotional connection to the sport. The NBA took that lesson to heart. For this reason, the Launchpad program, which was first introduced in 2021 and is currently growing throughout Asia, emphasizes player development pipelines in addition to fan entertainment. The reasoning is simple: Indonesia doesn’t just watch—it buys—if an Indonesian child makes it to the league one day.
Asia’s merchandise market isn’t completely unexplored in the sense that there isn’t anything. For thirty years, fake jerseys have been a common sight in street markets from Shanghai to Bangkok. What is lacking is the official, licensed enterprise. Distribution is one aspect of that. In markets where a $120 replica jersey is a substantial discretionary expenditure, pricing sensitivity plays a role. To be honest, the NBA hasn’t always made it simple or obvious for Asian fans to purchase genuine gear through practical local channels.
Whether the Singapore push represents a long-term structural commitment or just another well-meaning regional sprint that falters as domestic priorities mount is still up for debate. The league has previously started initiatives in Asia and allowed them to wander. The combination of real fan growth, a post-China rethink, and the involvement of technology and investor communities that view the middle class in the region as the real growth engine is what feels different this time—cautiously different.
The NBA experienced a brief period of renewed domestic excitement following the Knicks’ victory. The league’s actions in Asia over the next three years will reveal much more about the true direction of its international operations.
