While Major League Baseball’s rule changes recently have improved fan engagement across the board early in the 2023 season, this progress did not transfer well to the league’s premier mid-season event. This year’s All-Star Game received the lowest ratings ever recorded, dipping below the previous low set in 2022.
According to Sports Media Watch, an outlet tracking sports viewership, “Tuesday’s MLB All-Star Game averaged a record-low 3.9 rating and 7.01 million viewers on FOX (7.09M across all platforms), down 7% from the previous lows set last year (4.2, 7.51M).” Though it is a sign of stagnating public sentiment about All-Star Games in general, it does not seem to reflect attention toward baseball as a whole, which has increased in 2023.
Though this year’s All-Star Game received the lowest rating ever, it still received more viewers than any other American sport’s version of the event (Pro Bowl, NBA All-Star Game, etc.). Moreover, viewers in younger demographics have expressed an increased willingness to watch the sport after league officials instituted rules to make games faster. Attendance and local ratings have both increased moderately on average across the league.
Instead of marking a failure for MLB, less attention on the All-Star Game mirrors a similar lack of care in the concept itself. Likely due to a lack of physicality and decreased injury risk, MLB typically hosts a more competitive all-star event, and Tuesday’s 3-2 game lived up to the billing. Other leagues, namely the NBA and NFL, have tinkered endlessly with their formats to make all-star events more entertaining, adopting schoolyard-esque rules to embrace the casual nature of the event and promote interpersonal competition. Oddly enough, however, MLB’s steadfastness to a traditional game between its two leagues still outpaces its competitors.
Problems with all-star games in sports have been listed ad nauseam by this point and include a lack of player participation, lack of competition and overall meaninglessness. The larger problem, however, is that these events are integral to many traditional sporting schedules, preceding the Super Bowl in the NFL and serving as mid-season markers for the NBA, NHL and MLB. Officials have tried and failed to refresh the events and replacing them seems impossible.
While MLB struggles to crack the code on the All-Star Game, its improvements to regular season play have made a difference early on. The second half of the season should usher in even greater returns as the playoff race intensifies in many divisions.
