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The NFL cited a priority on player recognition in its dramatic decision to kill the Pro Bowl Games. The event’s precipitous decline on television, however, also represented a key factor in the removal of an all-star showcase with a lineage dating to 1939.
The league will no longer stage an all-star game of any kind, instead choosing to select and honor a set of 88 Pro Bowlers annually, with no alternates, as was the case for the actual game. In detailing the decision, NFL officials said they leaned heavily on player input, and a lack of interest by those players in competing in a post-playoff game
“They made that extremely clear on our calls and our discussions: ‘When our playoff run is over, our season ends. I don’t want to compete anymore,’” said NFL EVP of football operations Troy Vincent.
The other ugly truth about the Pro Bowl Games, however, is the sharp drop in viewership directly countered historic audience trends across the rest of the league, which is poised for even more growth this season. As recently as 2022, the final year the Pro Bowl was held as a traditional tackle football game, the event drew an average television audience of 6.7 million viewers—a 16-year low.
A subsequent pivot and renaming of the event to the Pro Bowl Games, and a new format based on flag football and skills competition, did not stem the bleeding—and instead accelerated the viewership decline. The 2023 Pro Bowl Games averaged 6.3 million viewers, and that figure then fell to 5.8 million in 2024, 4.7 million last year, and then a startlingly low 2 million this year. That represents a 57% drop in average viewership in just one year, and a 70% retreat over four years.
In February, the NFL sought to revive the Pro Bowl Games by staging it as part of Super Bowl LX week in the Bay Area. After developing a so-called flag football “Thunderdome” at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the event was largely obscured by the many other happenings around the region leading up to the league’s championship game.
“It’s OK to be the first league to walk away from a competitive all-star game,” said NFL EVP Peter O’Reilly.
For decades, though, the Pro Bowl was a cherished league tradition, particularly when it was held at Honolulu’s Aloha Stadium from 1980 to 2009. But Upton Bell, the son of former NFL commissioner Bert Bell, said the Pro Bowl was never meant to be a permanent event.
“My father invented the Pro Bowl to get the players of the ’50s more money,” the younger Bell said in a social media post. “He did not intend it to continue after the NFL became successful. The game went on entirely too long.”
The older Bell’s efforts that led to the 1951 debut of the Pro Bowl—a brand name that will live on—built on an NFL all-star game held between 1939 and 1942.
All-Star Struggles
For more than decade, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had openly mused about restructuring or outright ending the Pro Bowl, and the league’s struggles with this event somewhat mirror issues other major leagues have had with their own all-star games.
In each of them, there is an inherent tension. On one hand, these events are powerful marketing vehicles and showcases to grow fan interest around the world. On the other hand, they are also exhibition games that can create unpalatable injury risks for players still owed tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from their respective teams.
Each of the other U.S.-based men’s pro leagues has addressed this conflict in various ways. MLB still holds a competitive all-star game, but has done away with extra innings in favor of a home-run swing-off tiebreaker, used to dramatic effect last year. The NBA shifted to a U.S.-vs-World tournament format to great success last season. The NHL, meanwhile, is creating a rotation of internationally oriented competitions including its own All-Star weekend, the revamped World Cup of Hockey, and player participation in the Olympics—all building off of big fan reaction to last year’s 4 Nations Face-Off.
The NFL, however, has some unique attributes that made such fixes much more difficult. Its schedule format does not allow for a midseason break like the other leagues. The collision nature of the sport also has left players unwilling to exert themselves physically after the grind of the season—something fans increasingly noticed, and reflected in the declining viewership figures.
“You come off the championship games and the viewers see the physicality of the game and you try to replicate that,” Vincent said. “Frankly, it just doesn’t sit well.”
