
NBAcommissioner Adam Silver said Saturday the league expects to lose "several hundred million dollars" due to a row with China over a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.
TheNBA'sChinese sponsors cut ties in a fierce mainland backlash following Morey's tweet in October, just before two NBA teams played preseason exhibition matches in China.
State broadcaster CCTV also stopped airingNBAgames for the country's millions of ardent basketball fans and has not resumed.
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"The magnitude of the loss will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars," Silver told a press conference on the sidelines of theAll-StarWeekend in Chicago.
"Probably less than $400 million, maybe even less than that," he said. However, "it's substantial", he added. "I don't want to run from that ... But I don't have any sense that there's anypermanent damageto our business there."
The commissioner said he expected CCTV to resume broadcasts of NBA games but did not give a timeframe.