NBA Looking to Women’s Basketball to Fix All-Star Malaise

The NBA tried to spice up its All-Star Weekend with a four-team tournament, shortened games, and lots of commercial time. Reactions have been mixed from current players and fans, and changes to the format for next year are already being considered.

Compare that to last summer’s WNBA All-Star Game, where the overwhelming takeaway was about how competitive the game was. The game more than doubled the league’s previous viewership record for the All-Star game with 3.44 million viewers.

That kind of buzz is exactly what the NBA wants, and it’s considering borrowing pages out of women’s basketball’s books to get it.

Front Office Sports reported Monday that the NBA is considering moving up the start time, adding a one-on-one tournament with a $1 million prize, and recruiting more stars for the dunk contest. Giannis Antetokounmpo also floated ideas of a USA vs. World format for the game and moving the weekend to international destinations.

Many of these ideas originate in the WNBA and Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league.

Unrivaled wrapped its inaugural one-on-one tournament Friday night, with league cofounder Napheesa Collier winning the $200,000 prize. When asked after her win about the NBA potentially adding a similar competition, Collier said: “It just depends on if the guys are willing to put their name on the line like that or not. It would definitely be entertaining, though.”

Antetokounmpo’s idea of the USA vs. World game isn’t dissimilar to the WNBA’s most recent format. During the past two Olympic summers, the league divides its All-Star game between the gold medal hopefuls and remaining stars as Team USA vs. Team WNBA. With a chip on their shoulders, Team WNBA beat the Olympians in both 2021 and 2024. Arike Ogunbowale was named All-Star MVP both times. (NBA Commissioner Adam Silver called the USA vs. World suggestion an “old-fashioned concept.”)

This isn’t the first time the NBA has looked to women’s hoops for a boost.

The NBA added its in-season tournament, the NBA Cup, in the 2023–2024 season, after the WNBA began its Commissioner’s Cup in 2021 (which was originally intended to begin during the 2020 season but moved due to the COVID-19 pandemic). The NBA Cup has more money to work with, this season awarding more than the entire WNBA prize pool of $500,000 to each individual player on the winning team.

But the NBA is hoping to replicate the WNBA’s growing interest in their tournament—the women’s league said in September that its 30 Commissioner’s Cup games averaged 42% more fans than they did the year before. NBA players care about the in-season tournament, but the league is still working to drum up interest with fans.

And last year, the NBA brought in Sabrina Ionescu for a three-point contest against Stephen Curry. The competition propelled the league to its best Saturday night viewership in four years, with a peak of 5.4 million viewers tuning in during the shootout.