A top congressional panel focused on U.S.-China policy is escalating pressure on the owner of Washington D.C.’s major professional sports teams to end all business partnerships with Alibaba Group, the Chinese technology giant that is currently challenging a recent Pentagon designation labeling it a “Chinese military company.”
Rep. John Moolenaar, the Republican chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, made the formal demand in a written letter sent to Ted Leonsis, founder and CEO of Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE). MSE is the parent company that owns both the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the NHL’s Washington Capitals, two of the capital city’s most high-profile professional sports franchises.
Copies of the correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, show Moolenaar tied his request directly to a decision made by the U.S. Department of Defense one month earlier, which added Alibaba to a growing roster of entities accused of supporting China’s state-led military-civil fusion strategy. The lawmaker gave Leonsis a deadline of July 15 to confirm MSE has ended or will end all active commercial ties with Alibaba and its subsidiaries.
Alibaba has already pushed back against the Pentagon’s classification, filing a federal lawsuit seeking to have its name struck from the government’s blacklist. The current list of designated Chinese military companies includes 188 total entities, spanning from state-owned defense manufacturing conglomerates to private Chinese technology firms such as Alibaba. This designation reflects a sharp rise in longstanding concerns among U.S. national security officials over Beijing’s strategy of leveraging private and non-state commercial enterprises to advance its military modernization and technological development goals.
As of Monday, MSE officials had not issued an immediate response to AP’s request for comment on the congressional demand. Notably, MSE is far from the only U.S. professional sports organization with financial or commercial connections to Alibaba. Joseph Tsai, the co-founder of Alibaba who remains a major stakeholder in the firm, owns the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty, meaning the Chinese tech giant has deep existing ties to North American professional sports.
The House select committee, which was first established in 2023 to coordinate congressional oversight and policy on U.S.-China relations, has increasingly turned its attention to global sports in recent months. Earlier this year, Moolenaar and the committee’s top Democratic member, Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, sent a joint letter to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) raising concerns over the World Anti-Doping Agency’s handling of a doping case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who tested positive for performance-enhancing substances.
Twelve months ago, the panel also sent a letter to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, voicing concerns about Alibaba’s global sponsorship deal with the IOC, and warning that the partnership could lead to a similar commercial agreement between the firm and organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The letter at the time highlighted steps that Paris 2024 organizers had taken to reduce Alibaba’s operational role in the 2024 Summer Games.
Weeks after the committee sent that 2023 letter, Los Angeles Olympic organizers announced that Google, one of Alibaba’s major global technology competitors, would serve as the official cloud services provider for the 2028 Games, ending speculation that Alibaba would secure that high-profile contract.