It was March 1951 and the then comitted Maurice Podoloff and the advertising director Haskell Cohen come together to brainstorm ideas to promote NBA, which was barely two years old.
Cohen, considered a marketing genius in his time, proposed replicating the MLB All Star, an idea that came to fruition thanks to Walter Brown, owner of the Boston Celtics, offering to put up his pavilion and cover all the expenses. The event was a success: more than 10,000 people bought tickets, triple the average in the regular league.
Today the All Star It is no longer the all-star game of yesteryear. The NBA It has been introducing constant changes for more than a decade to revitalize it, without success. Of course, it is still one of the jewels in the crown in terms of profitability and media exposure.
He All Star It moves between the difficult dichotomy of being a great showcase for brands and convincing fans. The event is divided into three days, in which different activities are carried out (Celebrity Game, Rising Stars Games, three-point contests, dunks and skills and the main one, the All Star Game, on Sunday). Last year’s game, played in Utah, was the lowest-rated in history, with just 4.6 million viewers. It was 27% less than in 2022 and 22% less than in 2021, when viewers were already declining.
Recover the 23 million people who saw Michael Jordan in 1993 seems like a chimera today. The league is different, the audiences, too. But the reality is that the All-Star Game also does not arouse the interest that the NBA Finals of the last two years have surpassed 12 million viewers. Even the new Cup, which debuted this year, achieved 5.68 million people in front of the television in the final between ABC, Espn, TNT and NBA TV.
Changes without effect
The reality of the audiences is not foreign to the league. For more than ten years now, it has not stopped including changes to try to recover the most traditional fan and expand its audience. Teams chosen by captains, eliminate conferences, invent a format to finish the game when reaching 124 points and then abolish everything and recover the traditional format… And, this year, among the new features, include a three-point contest between NBA players and WNBA players, led by Stephen Curry and Sabrina Ionescu.
None of the changes have managed to resolve one of the fundamental issues: the All Star has nothing at stake. Competitiveness is non-existent, there are no economic incentives and participation has been reduced to a brand event for the NBA and for some promise or rotation player to find a moment of glory in the contests and earn some sponsorship. Hence the NBA be more careful when launching the Cup tournament, which does resolve all these issues and is hybridized into the regular season, instead of breaking it up.
Now, the All Star is still the flagship event of the basketball league, especially in terms of sponsorship. All of its sub-events have a title sponsor and prime time coverage. Even the training sessions have a commercial surname, according to a report published by the site 2playbooks.
Panini named the prospects’ practice session on Friday and the Rising Star Game; Ruffles to the celebrity party; AT&T named yesterday’s practice session, the G-League All Star Game and the HBCU Classic; State Farm was the title sponsor for the entire Saturday night, which featured contests, each with its own sponsor at a time: KIA Skills Challenge, Starry 3-Point Contest and AT&T Slam Dunk. The only one that the NBA has always refused to place is the all-star game, respecting its original nomenclature.
New LED track
The weekend turned into endless advertising impacts, which now enter a new era. The NBA reached an agreement with AGB Floors to design a track that is a giant LED screen, on which dynamic advertising can be displayed that changes in seconds. These types of tracks are expected to be integrated into the fields gradually, as the league itself uses the G-League and All Star as its main test beds before incorporating large-scale changes.
Despite having lost television appeal, the All Star It does maintain its strength in terms of attendance. The economic report presented by the city of Cleveland, host in 2022, showed that it hosted 124,641 visitors from 45 states and 24 countries. The average expense per person was US$362, which left the hotels almost completely occupied. All of this translated into a direct economic impact on the city of US$141.4 million and another US$128 million in indirect impact.
The total economic impact in Utah 2023 was estimated at $250 million. The forecasts in Indianapolis this year spoke of US$320 million, according to the study conducted by researchers at Temple University, in charge of preparing economic reports each year. It is expected that more than 100 million will have a direct impact on the local economy.
Source: Ambito
I am Pierce Boyd, a driven and ambitious professional working in the news industry. I have been writing for 24 Hours Worlds for over five years, specializing in sports section coverage. During my tenure at the publication, I have built an impressive portfolio of articles that has earned me a reputation as an experienced journalist and content creator.
