A version of this article originally appeared in the Sports Business Journal. This is just a tiny glimpse of the data available to CivicScience clients. Discover more data. The Sunday after the Super Bowl brought another marquee sporting event – the NBA All-Star Game.

In this year’s All-Star Game, the NBA set up a four-team, single-elimination tournament with a target score of 40 points for each round. Three of the teams consisted of the 24 NBA All-Star selections, while the fourth was the winner of the Rising Stars Challenge.

That number is a 13 percent decrease on the 2024 NBA All-Star Game, which drew 5.398 million viewers. And the numbers get even worse than that. It was the second-least-watched game in the event’s history, according to Front Office Sports, barely beating out the 2023 game, which had about 4.6 million people watching.

The NBA experimented with a new format for the All-Star Game this year after criticism of the traditional East-West game. Fans and analysts complained that the regular game had degraded into a glorified layup line,

The NBA is reportedly considering another major change to its All-Star Game format, with NBC, its new media partner, playing a key role in the decision-making process. The latest concept being floated is a four-team mini-tournament featuring two teams of U.