For the Pro Bowl in recent years, the only constant has been change.
Via Ben Fischer of Sports Business Journal, it’s changing again.
Fischer reports that the Pro Bowl Games will become part of Super Bowl week, and that they will be staged in the Super Bowl host city.
He explains that the league hopes to evolve the event into more of a made-for-TV production than a live event with a large audience. The league confirmed to Fischer in a statement that it has been talking to ESPN, the NFL Players Association, and individual players about a “reimagined Pro Bowl” to cap the 2025 season.
“We’ll share more in the coming weeks, but our focus is a best-in-class all-star event that celebrates the league’s top players, deepens fan engagement and spotlights flag football — especially in light of confirming player participation in the LA28 Olympic Games,” the league told Fischer.
The news comes days after SportsMediaWatch.com reported that the league did not have a Pro Bowl on its calendar, and that the NFL had no comment about the event.
For years, the Pro Bowl was an actual game played in Hawaii. The league held the full-pads Pro Bowl at least twice in the Super Bowl host city. Eventually, the NFL scrapped the game, given that no player in his right mind would risk injury by playing hard in a meaningless exhibition.
Enter the Pro Bowl Games, with a series of events culminating in a flag football game.
And as to the relocation of the Pro Bowl to the Super Bowl host city, that will introduce a fresh set of issues the next time the Super Bowl is played in Las Vegas, where players would surely have a bizarre, hypocritical list of do’s and don’ts regarding gambling establishments.