When I was a kid, I loved watching the MLB All-Star Game. There was something special about it. The Midsummer Classic was a rare opportunity to watch baseball’s biggest out-of-market stars playing a live game. In the months prior to, and following, the All-Star Game, my only opportunities to watch Ken Griffey Jr, Mark McGwire, and Frank Thomas play live was during the few national broadcasts each week. ESPN had Sunday and Wednesday Night Baseball, Fox had their Saturday game of the week, and Braves games were still available nationally on TBS. That was about it. Seeing the stars of the game was an incredible experience.
With Tuesday’s All-Star Game reaching a record-low audience, I began to think about what’s happened over the last 30 years that has turned the highlight of the summer into just another overhyped, underwatched event, and if there was any way to reverse this 30-year trend of viewership declines.
If you wanted to point to the exact season where the All-Star Game began to decline, it probably came in 1997 with the introduction of interleague play. That let fans see players from the other league, though it was just for one series for each team from the corresponding division each year. Instead of playing the same teams every year, five new teams were thrown into the fray for each team.
In 2002, interleague play became even more of a factor. Instead of playing the same division in interleague every year, the divisional opponents got rotated. Just in case you were bored of seeing the same five teams in interleague every year, here’s another five! And a year later, five new ones! Suddenly, fans were getting the opportunity to see all of the teams from the other league over a three-year period. If I was watching the All-Star Game just to see a Bonds, Griffey, McGwire, or Thomas, I now had another opportunity to see those guys.
This was around the time that MLB.tv and MLB Extra Innings started to pick up steam. Extra Innings launched in 1996 on DirecTV and expanded to cable providers in 2001, while MLB.tv launched in 2003. Both services allowed fans to watch out-of-market games. Subscribers no longer needed to wait until a nationally televised game popped up on the schedule to watch baseball’s biggest stars. With a couple of clicks, there they are, live on your screen. If I could watch Ken Griffey Jr play five times a week, why would I need to watch the All-Star Game to see Ken Griffey Jr and other that I can watch with the same ease?
Another body blow for the All-Star Game relates to interleague play, and the Houston Astros’ move to the American League in 2013. That gave each league 15 teams, and turned interleague play into a year-round, every week affair. No long was interleague confined to a chunk of time in the season – there would be at least one interleague game on almost every day of the season. Interleague wasn’t special anymore, and neither was seeing the stars from the other league.
The advent of smartphones and the MLB At Bat app was probably the death blow for the All-Star Game. For an event built so much around “moments” rather than the actual game itself, the ability for fans to click a couple icons on their phone to watch a moment mere minutes after it happened turned the ritual of watching the All-Star Game to not miss moments into a relic of the past. If something awesome happened in the pre-digital age and I missed it, I’d have to hang around until the post-game or SportsCenter to see it again. If an awesome thing happens now and you miss it, you can just open an app or go to a website and see it over and over again.
Can any of this be fixed? I really don’t think so, at the very least until MLB adds two more teams, because it would require undoing so much of the good work MLB has done growing the game and in the digital space over the years. There’s no real way to put the genie back into the bottle when it comes to digital highlights, access to out of market games, streaming, and so on. It would be a suicide mission, sabotaging the sport among younger viewers while also making the game less accessible. That’s counter to the mission the sport has embarked on in recent years, with a mandate to grow the game and expand its younger fanbase.
Tweaking interleague play could have an effect, but at this point in time, I think that’s far lower down the list of items affecting the All-Star Game’s appeal. By adding two more teams, MLB would have 16 in each league, thus eliminating the need for consistent interleague play. But before that happens, baseball is going in the opposite direction starting with the 2023 season, and is actually adding interleague games at the expense of divisional games. That’s probably the smarter, fairer move for the game.
Can anything really be done to improve the All-Star Game’s reputation and viewership? In my mind, the only thing that may pique some interest is a series of rules tweaks to the game, but given how riled up baseball purists get over even minor changes (the outcry over uniforms this year, for example), that could end up hurting the All-Star Game more than helping it.
I think, more than anything else, we should take the All-Star Game down from its pedestal. Instead of treating it as a sacred cow, we should treat it more like the NBA, NFL, and NHL treat their All-Star Games. Instead of focusing so much on the past and the game itself, we should focus on the future and the moments that have made All-Star Games of the past so memorable. The All-Star Game has been slow to change with the times (unlike the Home Run Derby), and I think that’s why its decline has been so damning and sad.
Sports Media Analyst
Joe Lucia has been covering sports media since 2011, and is a fan of the Ravens, Braves, and Manchester City. He was born and raised in Harrisburg, PA, but now makes his home in southern California with his wife.