TV Ratings: NBA All-Star Game Hits 15-Year High With Move to NBC

NBC’s first telecast of the NBA All-Star Game since 2002 brought in strong ratings.

Sunday’s contest, which featured a USA vs. World format and a round-robin between three squads, drew 8.8 million viewers across NBC, Peacock and Telemundo, based on preliminary Nielsen ratings and streaming data from Adobe Analytics. That’s the largest audience for the game since 2011 on TNT (with the caveat that Nielsen has made several changes to its methodology over those 15 years, and most of those games didn’t have a streaming outlet).

The game also grew by a huge 86 percent year to year, from 4.72 million viewers for the 2025 All-Star Game on TNT, TBS, TruTV and HBO Max. TNT had rights to the All-Star Game from 2003-25, but with a media rights deal that began this season, the cable network no longer carries the league.

After several years of complaints about less-than-engaging games, the revamped format for this year’s All-Star Game grew praise for its increased competitiveness. The two teams of U.S. players and one of international players played a round robin of 12-minute contests; the two U.S. teams faced off in the final matchup. Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves was named MVP.

Airing in between NBCUniversal’s two main blocks of Winter Olympics programming probably helped the All-Star Game’s ratings as well. Sunday’s cross-platform Olympics audience was 26.6 million for the combined “Milan Prime” (2-5 p.m. ET) and U.S. primetime blocks.

Through Sunday, NBCUniversal’s Olympics coverage is averaging 24.5 million viewers, with nine of 10 days topping 20 million. The 2026 games are up substantially from each of the last two Winter Olympics and tracking to be the most watched since 2014. Peacock has recorded 10.3 billion minutes of viewing for these Winter Olympics so far, 49 percent more than the combined streaming total for all previous Winter Olympics (live streaming for the winter games was first offered online in 2010).