The National Basketball Association’s (NBA) All-Star game has been surrounded with controversy the last few years, as ratings have been down significantly since 2020.
This year’s game continued the trend of unpopular All-Star games, which leaves the question: what more can be done to fix the NBA All-Star game?
Even with the overall positive feedback from the fans when it came to the quality of basketball being played, this was still the second lowest rated game in the last 25 years, with just 4.7 million viewers tuning in to watch.
This marks about a 13 percent decrease from last year’s 5.4 million viewers, and about a 2.6 million decrease from 2020s 7.28 million viewers.
For further contrast, the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Four Nations Cup final, which served as the league’s alternative to a traditional All-Star game, was watched by 16.1 million viewers in North America with 9.3 million in the United States.
The NBA, whose regular season games normally have more than a million more viewers than the NHL’s regular season games on average, saw its All-Star game out-streamed by over 4.5 million viewers in the United States alone.
After both events ended, sports talk shows on networks like ESPN and Fox had discussions about why the Four Nations Cup was so much more popular with fans.
Whether it was too many commercial breaks or any issues with the format, there was one issue that emerged in every conversation about the NBA All-Star game: effort.
For years, the issue with the All-Star Game has been its lack of effort and intensity from the players, making it simply not enjoyable for viewers. Fans don’t want to see games that end 211-186 like last year’s game did. They also don’t want to see players just walking up and down the court, playing no defense and shooting 168 combined three-pointers between the two teams. It’s simply a brand of basketball that viewers have rejected and labeled as not desirable.
The players in the Four Nations Cup played with passion and intensity. They represented their countries and left it all out on the ice, showing just how well the game can be played when a majority of the best players that the league has to offer are not only playing on the same team together but playing their hardest.
The round-robin game between the United States and Canada is a perfect example. In the first 90 seconds of the game alone there were three fights between some of the best players on the ice.
Of course, the NBA doesn’t need to fix their effort issues by encouraging their players to fight, but fixes as simple as playing better defense and simply caring to play real basketball instead of a glorified three-point contest will immediately make the game more enjoyable for fans. However, aside from simply putting in more effort, what other fixes can the NBA implement to make the All-Star game more enjoyable?
For starters, limiting the amount of commercials and the length of breaks between the games being played in the tournament format will help the NBA keep viewers’ attention. This year’s All-Star tournament saw just 42 minutes of actual basketball over the course of the three-hour window for the event, leaving fans feeling annoyed and bombarded with advertisements and ceremonies that took away from the actual games.
Tweaking the format could also create some more interest from the fans. The Rising Stars team should go back to having their own event, instead being replaced by a third team of all-stars composed of the next highest vote-getters who might’ve been snubbed from one of the main two teams. Having a team with guys like LaMelo Ball, Devin Booker, Tyrese Maxey and more would likely put up a much more competitive game against the other proven all-stars as opposed to the Rising Stars team that had mostly rookies and second-year players.
A team full of all-star snubs would also have the extra motivation of feeling left out which could motivate them to play harder and more intensely.
Lastly, having a better incentive for the winning team could create more buy-in amongst the players. Money simply isn’t enough of a motivating factor for players at this level who are all making above 30 million dollars per year, with some making more than 40 or 50 million.
There needs to be something tangible on the line to motivate the players.
If the game was to shift back to the original format of having an Eastern Conference versus Western Conference team, then offering the winning team home-court advantage in the NBA finals could be an incentive that gets players to play harder.
All hope isn’t lost for the NBA in terms of improving their All-Star game ratings going forward, it is going to take a lot of big changes to get there. If the league can cut down the commercial breaks, implement better incentives for winning, replace the Rising Stars team with a team of all-star snubs and simply get the players to try harder, then it will have a much better chance of breaking free from the current ratings slump and getting them back to those from before the pandemic.
