Major League Baseball's 2021 All-Star Game earned the spot of being the second-lowest-rated game of all time. The ratings come after MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred decided to move the game out of Atlanta due to Georgia's election integrity law.
But ratings for the 2021 All-Star Game were only scantly outdone, by a measly one percent, allowing 2019 to keep its position as the lowest-rated game in MLB history.
Ratings for America's pastime have been in slow decline over the decades. In 1980, according to Breitbart, broadcasts for the ASG earned 36 million viewers. By 2015, only 11 million tuned in to watch. And in 2021, broadcasts for the game garnered 8.24 million viewers, only to be outdone by 2019's game that reached 8.14 million viewers. There was no ASG in 2020, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the 2021 game was steeped in controversy from the jump after Manfred gave into the decision to move the event to Colorado in response to Georgia's new voting laws.
The unpopular decision drew the attention of Black voters who said moving the game was a bad idea. Others jumped on the idea as well. The Republican Party took out an ad criticizing the decision that featured a former member from the Georgia House of Representatives, the Rev. Melvin Everson.