Alibaba billionaire and Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai is backing a new collegiate basketball league featuring schools from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
It will be called the Asian University Basketball League. Tsai’s Blue Pool Capital provided a seed investment for the competition, which will allow play to start in August, according to a release from the AUBL.
The size of Tsai’s investment isn’t being publicly disclosed. A spokesperson said the deal is in the millions of dollars. The median seed round investment is about $1.3 million, according to data from Crunchbase.
The new league is under the purview the Asian University Sports Federation, which governs collegiate play in Asia, and Realeague, a Hong Kong business formed in 2023 by Jay Li.
Li previously worked for the NBA, the China Basketball Association and as head of the entity that manages Tsai’s basketball scholarship program, according to his LinkedIn profile. Li is CEO of the AUBL.
The AUBL will debut as a tournament in Hangzhou, China, from Aug. 18 to 24, offering two dozen games. Starting in 2026, the league will play a home-and-away season over six months, ending with a final four format at a location yet to be determined.
This year, the league will feature 12 squads: China’s Taiyuan University of Technology and Peking, Shanghai Jiao Tong, Tsinghua and Zhejiang universities; the University of Hong Kong; Japan’s Hakuoh and Nippon Sport Science universities; Korea’s Dongguk, Konkuk and Yonsei universities; and National Chengchi University of Taiwan.
Tsai has also invested in the Premier Lacrosse League, Fanatics and Just Women’s Sports through Blue Pool, according to data compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Tsai also owns the WNBA’s New York Liberty with his wife, Clara Wu Tsai.
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