It worked for the NHL, but would it work for the NBA or MLB?
The NHL successfully fought the midseason slump by going global, leading other major North American sports leagues to consider livening up their all-star breaks with the 4 Nations Face-off tournament during the February All-Star break.Fans of the sport and people who were just starting to follow it had a great time.
The tournament was won by Canada with an exciting overtime win over the United States. The final game was watched by 16.1 million people in North America, with 9.3 million in the US and 6.3 million in Canada.
Only Game 7 of last year’s Stanley Cup Final was watched by more people than that game in the last ten years.
Lauren Anderson, director of the Warsaw Sports Business Center at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business, said, “It was just the best example of pent-up demand for some great international play on the big stage with the big guns.”
In other words, can other teams hold their own versions of the Four Nations? Anderson is not sure.
“I worry that everybody’s going to see the success of 4 Nations and everybody’s going to try and run to do something, and it’s not going to be special,” she added. “It’s not going to be high-quality.”
The scores for last week’s NBA All-Star weekend showed that both fans and players didn’t like it. Front Office Sports says that only 4.7 million people watched the game, which is 13% less than the same time last year. In the last 25 years, it was the second-worst All-Star Game ever.
A NHL expert for ESPN, P.K. Subban, said that a lot of that is because of how hard NBA players work.
Subban said that 4 Nations “was the most watched game we’ve had in years.” “Because it’s not just about talent and skill.” You play for the guy next to you out of pride and respect. I have a question for the NBA players: why are you taking the court? What do you want to play?”
Mark Conrad, a professor at Fordham University, said he hopes that one day other leagues can change their all-star games into more interesting events.
“The Pro Bowl is stupid,” said Conrad, who teaches sports law at Fordham’s business school. “The NBA and pre-4 Nations NHL all-star games are jokes.”
MLB officials argue that the World Baseball Classic, held in spring in previous years, doesn’t require an international event in the middle of the season.
It wasn’t hard to put together a high-level summer hockey tournament for 4 Nations because almost all of the best hockey players in the world were already here working for North American companies.
In baseball, a version of 4 Nations probably couldn’t include Japan, which has won the WBC three times, or Korea, which came in third place in 2006 and second place in 2009. That’s because those players will be playing in their own games in July.
MLB teams sign top players from U.S., Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, with potential 4 Nations games during All-Star break. Conrad and Anderson question competitiveness between teams.
“I don’t know about the competitive balance there’d be between the U.S., Canada, Dominican Republic and Venezuela,” he said. “I think there’s a risk that you may get, like, 15-0 games.”
That would be different from the 4 Nations event, where hockey games were close. There was only one blowout out of the seven games. The others were either one-goal games or two-goal games with empty net scores.
Anderson said that the strengths of 4 Nations “really have to do with how the league is built and the structure of the players.” “No league is built for this the way the NHL is, where you can have four teams that are equally strong and competitive.”
Also, it’s not clear that MLB would want to work with its union to set up a foreign competition in the middle of the season when a nasty labor dispute is expected to happen after the 2026 season.
Too many good hoops in the world
It wasn’t easy for the US to win its fifth straight basketball gold title in Paris last summer.
The Americans had to come back from being down 17 points to beat Serbia in the quarterfinals. In the title game, they beat France thanks to more great play by Steph Curry.
Many of the best foreign players play for NBA teams, but most of the world’s best players work in Europe.
Serbia’s bronze medalists, six of the 10 players, and France’s gold medalists, 12 and seven, are all playing in Europe this season.
The professor at Fordham, Conrad, said that an international basketball tournament in the middle of the season would be more beneficial than a baseball version of it.
“Basketball is such an international game now, and baseball is not nearly as much,” he noted.
Conrad said it’s possible to have an NBA-led foreign tournament in the middle of the season, even though it would be hard to organize getting players from Greece, Turkey, Italy, Serbia, and other parts of Europe.
“That’s tough. He told her, “You’d have to find time to do it.” “But you know what? It can be done if the World Cup can change its schedule in the middle of soccer season, which it did in Qatar.” There seems to be a desire to do it. For a short, powerful show, it is possible to do. It seems likely to me.
The NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off was a huge success, while the NBA All-Star Game was criticized by some for being hard to understand and not being serious.
He said that the non-game events that happen over the weekend are just as important to pop culture as any action on the court.
“The NBA All-Star Game, that event is about the influencers,” he said. The point is to have fun. It has to do with sponsors. It’s mostly about what’s going on this weekend.
There will be no more Pro Bowl.
Since football is only played in the United States, there is no way for teams from other countries to play.
And because football is so rough, adding an extra game that doesn’t lead to the Super Bowl probably isn’t going to happen.
Finally, the league had enough of players who didn’t care and played at half speed and decided it could no longer put on a fake game. The Pro Bowl has been a touch-free flag football game since February 5, 2023.
Conrad said that he doesn’t think fans would be too upset if the NFL and NBA stopped having their all-star games.
“The Pro Bowl is idiotic, and they’re trying to come up with new ways and gimmicks,” he said. “That makes it easier to throw them away.” “I don’t think anyone would be sad if you threw them out.”
Anyone younger than 60 years old who likes football probably doesn’t remember that the NFL used to have a third-place game called the Playoff Bowl. It was played the weekend before the Super Bowl and featured the teams that lost in the semifinals.
The Playoff Bowl “wasn’t meaningless, but it was almost meaningless,” said Boyd Dowler, a split end for the Green Packers who won two Super Bowls and played in two of those third-place games.