Pro Bowl Games drew millions of viewers with new flag football format

In the latest example of what a monster the NFL is, more than 6.2 million people tuned in to watch Sunday's Pro Bowl Games, according to Sports Media Watch. 

While that number is a small decline from the 6.7 million people who tuned in for the Pro Bowl a year ago, it is still a massive number when you consider that an actual football game was not played.

The NFL replaced the traditional Pro Bowl this year with the Pro Bowl Games, a series of 7-on-7 flag football games.

Just for comparisons sake, the 6.2 million viewers easily dominated every other sports broadcast from the weekend. 

NASCAR's Clash at the Coliseum in Los Angeles drew 3.65 million viewers, while the NHL All-Star Game drew 1.5 million. 

The fact that the NFL can put together flag football games that do not even include some of the best players in the league and still dominate the ratings in a weekend, while also drawing more people than just about any NHL or NBA game will draw, is a stunning accomplishment. 

Because players were withdrawing from the game and the effort level had been reduced to almost zero, the NFL felt it needed to make dramatic changes to the Pro Bowl. That is where the Pro Bowl Games came in, and the new format obviously did what the NFL hoped it would accomplish. It put a lot of the league's top players together in one place for an all-star game, and it got a comparable number of people to watch as previous versions of the game. 

As long as it has something even remotely to do with football and NFL players are involved, millions of people are going to tune in.

The NFL is still king, and nobody is taking that crown anytime soon.