The National Basketball Association is celebrating its ongoing partnership with China's Tencent Holdings Ltd. by introducing the NBA League Pass, a platform featuring a full season of on-demand and live games accessible via mobile devices.

Tencent, the exclusive official digital partner of the National Basketball Association in China, is also set to feature a record amount of live games, programming and highlights to its consumers. Basketball fans can watch the live games and content via Tencent?s NBA sections online and the Tencent Video and News mobile applications.

"Mobile adoption in China has been widespread ? especially when concerning mobile/tablet video," said Esha Shah, manager of mobile strategy at Fetch, San Francisco. "Making NBA content available on mobile is a great way to extend its outreach. 

"Most content on mobile is current, relevant and appealing. This frames NBA as something users should watch to be ?in the know.'"

New apps
Tencent and the NBA?s five-year partnership expansion also includes the rollout of the NBA Game Time mobile application, which will offer consumers extensive news, statistics and video highlights from games. The Internet provider will also bolster the NBA?s efforts to increase its social media presence on its platforms, such as Qzone, Weixin and QQ.

Visitors of the QQ.com and v.QQ.com sites can also enjoy watching live games, which will be cross-posted onto Mobile QQ as well.

Games will include preseason and regular-season.

Fans that prefer to stream games via mobile can download the Tencent Video app, an iPad application that provides users with free high-definition videos including popular movies and television programs, live events and entertainment shows. It also enables offline watching for those who do not have network access.

Consumers are also sure to enjoy the NBA League Pass offering, as they may select to watch games on-demand on their mobile devices while on-the-go.

Lucrative partnership
The partnership between the NBA and Tencent displays the mass potential of similar lucrative relationships between sports marketers and foreign Internet providers.  The two organizations also manage the NBA?s Chinese digital assets, such as the individual sites for all 30 NBA teams and the official online site, NBA.com/China.

Later plans for the partnership include launching the NBA Community, which comprises of a gaming section found on the Tencent Games platform, a premium subscription option for special access to NBA media and a social commerce platform that is more integrated.

Gaming will be a key focus for 2015, as the NBA aims to create several themed interactive games for Tencent, to be distributed on mobile devices.

NBA Community will also have a loyalty aspect. NBA ID, the brand?s Chinese loyalty platform, will be integrated into the Community, so that fans may have the ability to earn rewards points for using various NBA services.

Rewards points can then be redeemed for merchandise and special privileges.

"By partnering with Tencent, NBA is reaching out to a giant network that can push content to the right people," Ms. Shah said. "Tencent's mobile messaging app WeChat is renowned for having 355 million monthly active users. 

"Tencent has reported 808 million monthly active users on QQ and a peak of 180 million simultaneous users. This is a massive audience that can popularize the NBA in China."

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York