The ratings for the NBA All-Star Game were either very bad or very good depending on who you ask and how it is framed.
Let’s start with the bad. It is undeniable that ratings for the NBA, like every sport since the pandemic began, have struggled to draw the TV audience it used to. Sunday night, that fact was crystal clear as the NBA All-Star Game saw its lowest ratings and smallest TV audience ever. Overall viewership was down 24% from last year.
Numbers-wise, the NBA has to be particularly disappointed with the 18-34 demographic. A fanbase that the league touts as one of its strengths only delivered a 2.4 rating.
Now, let’s talk about the good. This is a similar narrative to the Super Bowl. The audience was low by comparison to past events, but compared to the rest of television, the NBA All-Star Game, like the Super Bowl, delivered.
Inside the sports world, the All-Star Game tops every non-football telecast since last year’s World Series. It is the most watched game of the NBA season.
Maybe some older viewers skipped the All-Star Game in favor of Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Prince Harry and Megan Markel on CBS, but with that 18-34 demo, basketball beat the royal tell all.
So it was undeniably a good night for the NBA while simultaneously being an undeniably bad one. The smaller audience is definitely something that the league is concerned about, but given the trend of all sports broadcasts being down, the NBA is still outperforming most of its competition outside of football.
Discussions of the NBA’s ratings have come with social implications since 2019, when the league forced then-Rockets GM Daryl Morey to walk back a tweet expressing support for democracy in Hong Kong. For one night only, it seems that the same game provided fodder for both narratives about the country’s interest in the NBA.
