BroBible
The Pro Bowl has never really been appointment viewing, and the NFL has spent the past few years attempting to drum up interest for an event that most fans simply could not care less about. There’s always a chance it attempts to overhaul things yet again this season, but it appears the league may have simply decided to put its gathering of all-stars out to pasture.
In 1933, the best players in the MLB faced off in an exhibition in Chicago that is widely considered the first all-star game. That concept eventually made its way to other sports, and the NFL held one for a brief period toward the turn of the 1940s before introducing the contest dubbed the “Pro Bowl” in 1951.
That showdown was held on an annual basis for more than 70 years, but the anemic ratings for contests featuring injury-averse players attempting to play a glorified pickup game led to the NFL overhauling the event that was rebranded as the “Pro Bowl Games” in 2022.
That marked the last year the showdown between the AFC and NFC resembled an NFL game, as the main event (which is supplemented by a variety of skills competitions) adopted flag football rules in 2023. However, the tweaks didn’t do anything to hinder an ongoing ratings slide; 4.7 million people tuned in last season, compared to 5.8 million in 2024 and 6.3 million in 2023.
There’s no telling if that trend will continue, but we might not even get the chance to see if that ends up being the case.
The Pro Bowl has traditionally been held on the Sunday before the Super Bowl, and the NFL officially locks in that date well in advance; the date and location for the last two iterations of the Pro Bowl Game were announced around a month before the regular season got underway.
However, as Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch pointed out on Tuesday, that was not the case this year, and there is currently no mention of the Pro Bowl Games or any sort of all-star event on the NFL’s official schedule.
Lewis notes ESPN seemingly plans to broadcast a Stadium Series showdown between the Bruins and the Lightning in the window where the Pro Bowl would usually be broadcast on February 1, 2026, adding he “can confirm the league does not have anything to announce or state publicly regarding the annual all-star event.”
As a result, it seems like the Pro Bowl might have gone out with a whimper, although we’ll have to wait and see if that is indeed the case.
The post The NFL May Have Finally Pulled The Plug On The Pro Bowl After Trying (And Failing) To Make Fans Care appeared first on BroBible.
