Moved off of its usual Sunday timeslot — and broadcast television — the NFL Pro Bowl Games sank to a new low.
Tuesday’s NFL Pro Bowl Games averaged 2.0 million viewers across ESPN, ESPN Deportes and DisneyXD, down 57% from last year’s Sunday afternoon event, which in addition to those networks also aired on ABC (4.7M). This year’s audience is easily the lowest for the game, not counting a tape-delayed COVID-era edition in 2021 that drew 1.9 million.
The steep decline and record-low are no surprise given the move off of Sunday afternoon — and off of broadcast television. This year marked the first Pro Bowl that did not air on a Sunday since 2007 (when CBS aired the game on Saturday) and the first to air exclusively on cable since 2017.
For all of the complaints about the Pro Bowl, both the traditional game that was discontinued after 2022 and the flag football contest that replaced it, the event typically trailed only the MLB All-Star Game and Home Run Derby as the most-watched All-Star event in sports. Last year’s Pro Bowl Games had as many viewers the NBA All-Star Game that followed two weeks later.
But this year’s audience ranks seventh among major All-Star events over the past year, not only trailing the MLB and NBA (including the Home Run Derby and NBA All-Star Saturday Night), but even the WNBA All-Star Game on ABC — which Caitlin Clark missed due to injury (2.2M) — and NASCAR All-Star Race on FS1 (2.3M). (The official Nielsen figure for the NASCAR race, which includes pre-and-postrace coverage, is lower at 1.97 million.)
Viewership did outpace the most recent NHL All-Star Game in 2024 (1.40M).
Even at its height — averaging more than 10 million viewers in five-straight years from 2010-14 — Pro Bowl viewership was always below average by the standard of the NFL regular season. But this year’s audience was even below the NFL preseason viewership average of 2.2 million.
As might go without saying, a poor NFL audience is still strong by any other standard. The Pro Bowl still outdrew all-but-seven live sporting events on the weekend it would normally have taken place, trailing NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” doubleheader, a trio of college basketball games, the NHL Stadium Series and the final round of the PGA at Torrey Pines.
