The NFL’s Pro Bowl stinks. But as long as it continues to draw an audience (and churn a profit), the NFL will continue to stage it.
It definitely draws an audience, and surely churns a profit. This year’s game, played on a Sunday afternoon, generated a rating of 5.9. That’s more than 15 percent higher than the rating generated in prime time on Sunday night by the NBA All-Star Game.
Via multiple reports, the basketball game drew a 5.1, despite being broadcast on both TBS and TNT. Of course, the Pro Bowl was simulcast as well, on both ESPN and ABC. And, yes, broadcast networks like ABC typically generate bigger numbers.
Still, the fact that football’s worthless, meaningless, intensity-less end-of-season exhibition, which requires multiple rounds of invitations to fill up the rosters, can outpace the NBA’s midseason cavalcade of superstars shows that football is still the king, regardless of the wishful thinking and/or misguided takes of people with a vested interest in seeing basketball catch and surpass football.
It’s simply not happening now, and it won’t be happening any time soon.
