NBA All-Star Game attracts same audience as NFL Pro Bowl flag football

The age of sizzle for major-league all-star exhibitions has ended. With one notable, and very recent, exception.

The NBA All-Star Game attracted an average viewership of 4.7 million on Sunday night, via Sports Business Journal. That's identical to the audience that watched the NFL's flag-football Pro Bowl replacement last month.

For the NFL, it was an 18-percent drop and an all-time low audience for the post-Pro Bowl Pro Bowl. For the NBA, the number shows a 13-percent drop over last year — but a three-percent bump over the record low from two years ago.

The NBA's midseason all-star event competed with the 50th anniversary SNL special on NBC, which averaged more than 14.8 million viewers.

Meanwhile, the NHL's 4 Nations Face-Off is thriving, relative to the competition and its regular-season product. Saturday night's game between the U.S. and Canada averaged 4.4 million viewers, beating the same-old NBA All-Star Saturday night events, which drew 3.4 million — matching the lowest number on record for the event.

Any seven-figure live crowd is significant in today's ever-fracturing consumption ecosystem. But the trend isn't good when it comes to the NFL, the NBA, and MLB's effort to maximize the number of telescopes on the one day per year when all of their stars come out.