Commentary

Air Ball: NBA All Star Game Misses Nielsen Net

• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

The second-biggest U.S. TV sports franchise -- the NBA -- just recorded its second-worst performance of the NBA All-Star Game ever -- with just 4.7 million viewers on TNT, down 13% from a year ago.

The least-watched All-Star Game was two years ago, with 4.6 million viewers.

Give the NBA some credit -- this year, anyway. It looked to boost interest in the game, which had been continually devolved to a weakly competitive event between Western and Eastern conference teams. These contests had come with virtually no one playing defense -- and a whole lot of scoring.

The new event consisted of a series of “tournament” games -- a reimagined format: Three shorter games (the first to score 40 points) featuring four teams. All this replaced the traditional 48-minute game between two teams.

The winning Team Shaq OGs (Old Guys) featured Steph Curry being named MVP in a 41-25 contest beating Team Chuck's Global Stars.

Let System 21 add tons of local-direct revenue to your revenue stream! Call Michael Guld at 804-356-7006 

To be sure, professional All-Star games -- NFL Pro Bowls, and the like -- are not what viewers ultimately want to see because they are games with very little value for the players, and for their respective teams going forward.

Those leagues are also doing different stuff. The NFL Pro Bowl for instance, is now significantly different in that it no longer features a traditional tackle football game. Instead it is all about a week-long series of skills competitions culminating in a non-contact flag football game between the AFC and NFC teams.

For the NBA, this year there was also a lot of skills-based and contest-based content. Plainly, it was just a big TV marketing platform for brands to make a bigger visible impact for NBA fans/consumers.

No doubt hardcore fans -- who always want to see their favorites play with some vigor -- were not interested.

The low Sunday turnout for the All-Star game was also dinged by a special “SNL50 -- NBC’s “Saturday Night Live" 50th anniversary show -- featured on the same night, which earned a big 14.8 million viewers on NBC Television Network and Peacock.

Perhaps the new NBA format can find a way to build some internal competition: “Old guys” versus global non-U.S. players versus "rising stars" could have some value. But it also needs to be competitive -- with some defense-action improvement.

And -- sorry, brands -- it also might help to get rid of the iffy, fringe content.