After years of declining ratings for the annual All-Star game, the NBA is stepping in to make its biggest changes yet. According to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Byron Spruell, the NBA’s president of league operations, there are ongoing discussions to replace the traditional All-Star game format with an international competition.
“Our All-Star Game will return to NBC next season in the middle of their coverage of the Winter Olympics,” Silver told The Athletic. “Given the strong interest we’ve seen in international basketball competitions, most recently in last summer’s Olympics in Paris, we’re discussing concepts with the players association that focus on NBA players representing their countries or regions instead of the more traditional formats that we’ve used in the past.”
As the NBA has increasingly globalized its reach, there’s been a tremendous rise in talent from places outside the United States. With players and fans being more spread across the world than ever, the NBA felt they needed to tap into their overseas market, and this could be one way to do it.
“Formats that lean into this idea of international play, to some extent leaning a little bit on this idea of the United States versus rest of the world, and then also going all the way from the mini-tournaments we experimented with in San Francisco, maybe that has some application, more on nations or regions based,” said Spruell.
The NBA is eager to try something new with All-Star weekend, and the upcoming Olympic Games in 2028 will create the perfect opportunity to host an international competition.
“It’s not lost on us … we’ll be in L.A., the home of the ’28 Summer Olympics, and we’ll be competing in the arena at Intuit, where the basketball competition will take place in the 2028 Olympics,” Silver said. “So I think all of those factors, when they come together, it presents an enormous opportunity for us to do something with an international competition instead of the traditional All-Star formats that we’ve used.”
The NBA All-Star Game has traditionally featured an East vs. West format, giving us premium matchups over the years between the league’s top superstars. It was a simple format that worked for decades before the NBA began to make changes.
Due to a lack of effort and interest from the players, the fans began to lose interest, which began to degrade the overall quality of the All-Star weekend itself. In response, the league changed the format several times, from a “team captain” style to the “Elam Ending” style in 2023.
No changes have worked so far, and the quality of the All-Star game hit an all-time low last season, even after going back to the traditional East vs. West format. With no other options, the NBA is leaning toward plans to integrate an international tournament that could replace the game itself.
With this plan, the league could add some intrigue to All-Star Sunday while also building up its international audience. Multiple nations would be represented, and players would take much more pride in suiting up for their home countries than for an Eastern/Western Conference. At the very least, it will open up the floor for multiple games instead of the entire day being centered around a single match.
