This weekend marks the 2025 Pro Bowl, and it has a problem. A problem that is stemming far outside just the world of football and into other sports’ all star game events. They are changing their events to make it more safe for their players, which is understandable, but viewership has been slowly falling off over the past few seasons and there are a few reasons why.
Before taking a look at those reasons, the total viewerships of the NFL Pro Bowl, NBA All Star game, and MLB All Star game show the same trends for total viewership of their events. Since 2000, 2024 was the lowest viewership for the NFL and 2023 was the lowest for the NBA and MLB.
The MLB is an odd one out here because they haven’t changed their format for their all star festivities at all. The NBA and NFL however, have changed theirs drastically.
Back in 2017, the NBA went away from the East vs West format and turned to a draft style event. The two players who had the most votes would be team captains and they would draft their starting lineups and bench from the rest of the all stars voted in. On paper, this had NBA fans excited, but when the players started playing nonchalantly with little competitive spirit to it, it turned into a game of who can make the farthest shot or the coolest looking dunk.
A four team bracket format is being debuted for the 2025 NBA All Star game, which could bring a fresh new look and hopefully boost the viewership back to where it once was.
Now, the NFL Pro Bowl, which are now dubbed the Pro Bowl games just held their skills showdown on January 30th, which in and of itself has been received well from NFL fans, getting to see their favorite players go up against each other in various events like Kick-Tac-Toe, a passing precision challenge, and dodgeball.
The main point as to why the Pro-Bowl has been losing viewers, is the flag-football game that has been implemented into the event. Flag-football is known to be an offense heavy sport, where scores are being run up and defense is harder to be played. And without a need to block pass rushers, the meaning of the offensive line and defensive line has lost a lot of purpose in what is supposed to be the headliner event for the Pro Bowl.
The flag football game does give players a safer way to enjoy an event like this but it’s not the true football that fans are used to watching.
Some players just don’t want to play either. Over the past week three of the six quarterbacks have backed out of the weekend. In the AFC, Russell Wilson and Drake Maye replaced Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. On the NFC side, Baker Mayfield replaced Jayden Daniels.
Allen and Daniels both played in their respective conference championship games, so pulling out wasn’t that surprising. Yet Lamar Jackson was. Jackson’s backfield mate Derrick Henry also pulled out of the pro bowl, which sent James Cook in his place instead.
With all these varying opinions on the Pro Bowl and what it means for the NFL, the future for all North American all star events will be under the microscope for the coming years.
