The NBA All-Star Weekend is one of the league's flagship events as all of its stars gather together for one weekend, participate in challenges to showcase different on-court skills, and play an exhibition game to highlight its best talents.
This weekend, the NBA hosts its three-day All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis, Indiana, and its biggest names like LeBron James and Nikola Jokic are expected to play on Sunday night. On Saturday, its usual events including the 3-Point Contest and Slam Dunk Contest will also take place.
The NBA All-Star showcase has generally been much better than its NFL counterpart because the NFL Pro Bowl game no longer has a full contact game, and is often missing major names because it comes before the Super Bowl. However, the viewership for the NBA showcase has tanked significantly over the past years as the product has dwindled.
Related: Bill Simmons and Pat McAfee are quietly taking shots at each other on their own shows
The 2023 NBA All-Star game was the lowest-watched All-Star game on record, and it was not even close. Last year's game had an average of 4.6 million viewers, 23% less than in 2021, which was affected by Covid.
TheStreet
Viewership has also been declining steadily this century. The game used to hit over 10 million viewers during the first few years of the 2000s, and though it steadily dropped it was consistently garnering between seven to eight million eyeballs over most of the previous decade. However, since 2019, only one All-Star game has grossed over seven million viewers.
All-Star Saturday Night shows a different story, but has the same conclusion. Though the Saturday event didn't ever garner as many viewers as the centerpiece All-Star game, it started to gain more viewers as the century went on and peaked at 8.09 million viewers in 2011 when Blake Griffin jumped over a car in the Dunk Contest.
However, the product has declined as fewer and fewer big names have decided to participate in the dunk contest. Viewership has only breached six million once — in 2015, when Zach LaVine won the first of his two Dunk Contest championsips — but has declined steadily since including a low of 3.42 million last year.
TheStreet
The previous low in viewership for the Saturday showcase was 4.24 million in 2022 followed by 4.66 million in 2018.
The viewership declines present a major problem for the NBA, a league that has not seen viewership growth in its regular season games even as other leagues like the NFL have continued to see spikes. This could affect the NBA's next media rights deal which starts after the 2024-2025 season, and there's an expectation that the league is looking to double or even triple the around $2.7 billion annually that it gets paid by ESPN and Turner Sports.
The league is making some changes to hopefully spice up the game this year. The All-Star game format has reverted back to the original Western Conference versus Eastern Conference format after making a change in 2018 that had captains draft teams. It's also going away from the Elam ending, which puts a target score for team's to reach, and reverted back to the original NBA game format of twelve minutes per quarter.
Related: All The Smoke launches new media company, partners with Dan Le Batard
All-Star Saturday Night also has a few changes, including a special three-point contest between the NBA's all-time leader in threes Stephen Curry and WNBA star Sabrina Ionescu, who set the record last season for most points scored in a three-point contest between both the WNBA and NBA.
The Dunk Contest, the main event on Saturday, is often a hit-or-miss and has lacked big names in recent years. But this year, All-Star Jaylen Brown is part of the fray and challenging the surprising returning champion Mac McClung, who won despite being in the NBA's G-League.
The jury is out to see whether these changes will help out viewership or at least curb the decline for the league, but it's clear that they're trying to do something to combat this obvious problem.
Related: Veteran fund manager picks favorite stocks for 2024
