For all the chatter that the PGA Tour’s television ratings are suffering due to the friction in the sport, that hasn’t been the case this year.
The golf has been compelling this season. The stars are showing out. And people are tuning in.
Last Sunday, Justin Thomas’s return to the winner’s circle at the RBC Heritage averaged 4.362 million viewers, peaking at 6 million. It was the tournament’s most-watched final round in 23 years and the most-watched PGA Tour final round since the 2023 Tour Championship.
Golf was able to carry the momentum from Rory McIlroy’s dramatic and historic playoff wins at the Masters, which averaged 12.707 million viewers on CBS, up 33% from Scottie Scheffler’s victory in 2024. It was the most-watched Masters Sunday since 2018.
The Tour’s strong showing goes back to the Genesis Invitational in February, where Ludvig Åberg helped make the event the most-watched non-major since the 2024 Players Championship, with 3.4 million people tuning in. That was up from ‘24 and nearly the same as Jon Rahm’s win in ‘23.
During NBC’s eight-tournament stretch between the Mexico Open at VidantaWorld and the Valero Texas Open, leading into the Masters, there was a six-week stretch that saw an increase in the final-round ratings from last year, highlighted by McIlroy’s Players Championship win, which averaged 3.6 million people despite a lengthy weather delay. Even the three-hole Monday playoff saw 1.5 million tune in at 9 a.m. ET, the second-highest weekday total on Golf Channel in 20 years, only behind Friday of the 2021 Ryder Cup (that includes the first and second rounds of nearly every Tour event).
NBC’s run ended with Brian Harman’s runaway victory at the Valero, which had 1.746 million viewers on Sunday, down 20% from Akshay Bhatia’s win last season. However, for good measure, it went head-to-head with LIV Miami on Fox, which drew 484,000 for Marc Leishman’s win, LIV’s largest number ever for a U.S. audience.
Maybe the Tour should use that as leverage while they continue negotiating with LIV to form a unified circuit.
It should be noted, though, that 10 of the Tour’s first 13 events this season saw a decline in final-round viewership from 2023, with the exceptions being the Genesis, Min Woo Lee’s Texas Children’s Houston Open win and McIlroy’s victory at Pebble Beach.
But bouncing back after a down 2024 is a promising sign for the sport, showing it can once again be on an upward trajectory when golf's household names yield thrilling finishes on some of the world’s most famed courses.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as RBC Heritage the Latest Example of PGA Tour's Ratings Turnaround of Late.
