Sands China Closes Out NBA China Games With a Five-Day Charity Push, and David Beckham Shows Up Again

Sands China closed out Community Impact Week 2026 on Sunday, the final day of the NBA China Games, with a basketball carnival at NBA House inside the Cotai Expo at The Venetian Macao. Over five days, roughly 200 people took part, including members of the Macau Special Olympics, who ran a skills clinic with an NBA coach, and families from local social service groups who got a full NBA House tour and a goodie bag on the way out.

The star power did its job. NBA legend Chris Bosh, Chinese national player Zhang Ziyu, and Olympic short-track gold medalist Wang Meng all worked the clinic, while Sands Global Ambassador Sir David Beckham, back for a second year, spent time with families from groups including the Macau Tung Sin Tong Charitable Society. Patrick Dumont, chairman and chief executive of Las Vegas Sands and chairman of Sands China, said the week showed that "world-class sporting events do more than enhance Macao's international appeal," which is also a tidy way of saying a casino operator's name got attached to five days of goodwill right as the city leans harder into tourism beyond the gaming floor.

That is the real pitch here. Macau has spent years trying to convince the world it is not just a casino town, and Sands China has figured out that lending its arena, its ambassador budget, and its NBA relationship to youth basketball and Special Olympics programming is a cheaper rebrand than any ad campaign could buy.

Source: PR Newswire

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →