MIES, Switzerland/SHENZHEN, China - FIBA, the International Basketball Federation, on Tuesday announced it has signed a nine-year sponsorship deal with Tencent, a leading global digital company. The agreement complements the media partnership which the two parties announced back in May.

Under this partnership, which will be for the period 2017-2025, Tencent will have the status of FIBA Partner and Global Partner at all of FIBA's major national team competitions for men and women at senior and youth levels, including: FIBA Basketball World Cups, FIBA Continental Cups, FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, FIBA U19 and U17 World Championships and FIBA Basketball World Cup Qualifiers. The FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019 in China represents an important landmark in this agreement.

As part of the deal, the brands which will be activated at these tournaments include Tencent popular social network QQ.com, instant messaging service WeChat, e-payment services WeChat Payment and QQ Wallet and online video games platform Tencent Games.

Tencent and its associated brands will receive significant brand visibility at FIBA competitions on and off the court, and will be able to promote extensively its products and services to the global basketball community across all FIBA channels.

Patrick Baumann, FIBA Secretary General and International Olympic Committee (IOC) Member, said: "Following the media partnership with Tencent, FIBA is extremely pleased to announce this important sponsorship agreement which will further cement the relationship between our two organisations. China is already today one of the most important countries for FIBA and basketball and has a lot of heritage with over 600,000 basketball courts across the country. We aim to build on the enormous passion for the sport in this territory in our quest to make basketball the most popular sport in every corner of the world. With such a partner as Tencent, we can bring basketball to every household in China not only on the road to the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019, but far beyond."

SY Lau, Senior Executive Vice President of Tencent & President of its Online Media Group, said: "We are very glad to establish the strategic partnership with FIBA, the world governing body for basketball. Tencent and FIBA will work together closely in a variety of capacities in the coming nine years, particularly for the 2019 and 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cups. Built upon a massive user base of around 800 million viewers, Tencent will keep working on expanding the influence of international basketball in China and driving China’s sports industry to new heights through a score of ever-improving media products and technologies."

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About Tencent 
Tencent uses technology to enrich the lives of Internet users. Every day, hundreds of millions of people communicate, share experiences, consume information and seek entertainment through our integrated platforms. Tencent’s diversified services include QQ and Weixin/WeChat for communications; Qzone for social networking; QQ Game Platform for online games; QQ.com and Tencent News for information, and Tencent Video for premium video content.

Tencent was founded in Shenzhen in 1998 and went public on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2004. The Company is one of the 50 constituent stocks of the Hang Seng Index. Tencent seeks to evolve with the Internet by investing in innovation, providing a hospitable environment for partners, and staying close to users.

For more information, please visit www.tencent.com/ir.

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About FIBA
FIBA (fiba.com) - the world governing body for basketball - is an independent association formed by 215 National Basketball Federations throughout the world. It is recognised as the sole competent authority in basketball by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

For further information about FIBA visit fiba.com or follow FIBA on facebook.com/fiba, twitter.com/fiba,  instagram.com/fiba and youtube.com/fiba.