One of the most high-profile contests of the calendar took place earlier in the week with The Showdown.
In it, PGA Tour superstars Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy took on two of the biggest names on LIV Golf’s roster, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, at Shadow Creek Golf Club in Las Vegas.
That set up an intriguing match as it offered one of the few times outside the four Majors where players from the rival circuits have come together since the emergence of LIV Golf in 2022.
Overall, the head-to-head between the two teams perhaps wasn’t as closely contested as the organizers would have hoped for, with the PGA Tour duo comfortably winning all three sessions.
However, the matchplay contest still offered a tantalizing glimpse of what could transpire more often if a deal on the future of the men’s elite game is agreed upon by the PGA Tour and the Saudi Public Investment Fund that bankrolls LIV Golf.
While there was plenty of hype surrounding the match since it was confirmed in October, per Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter, it doesn’t appear to have translated to bumper TV viewing figures.
He has revealed on X that the match drew an underwhelming 625,000 viewers across two networks, TNT and TBS, which broadcast the action.
Carpenter then added context, writing: “For comparison, that would rank as the second-lowest total ever in The Match, series."
The ballyhooed Crypto Showdown, the event the entire golf world had been clamoring for, drew a whopping 625k viewers across two networks (TNT/TBS) on Tuesday.For comparison, that would rank as the second-lowest total ever in “The Match” series pic.twitter.com/yx1tnYBUn0December 21, 2024
The Match began in 2018 at the same venue, with a head-to-head between Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and it has regularly attracted more than a million viewers.
For example, of the available figures, one of two 2020 editions, The Match: Champions for Charity, which again featured Woods and Mickelson alongside NFL legends Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, drew a US average of 5.8 million.
However, February’s The Match IX, played between Max Homa, McIlroy, Lexi Thompson and Rose Zhang, attracted just 511,000 TV viewers to the coverage on TNT, TruTV and HLN.
While The Showdown, which was also broadcast on TruTV, saw an uptick on that figure, it will still likely be regarded as something of a disappointment.
The news comes after a mixed year of viewing figures for high-profile tournaments. For example, while an average of 2.8 million people tuned in to watch Sunday's action across the regular PGA Tour season, the figure was still around 20% lower than the previous year when excluding the four Majors.
Meanwhile, there was a substantial drop once the FedEx Cup Fall section of the PGA Tour season began, with an average of just 69,000 people tuning in to the Golf Channel to watch Patton Kizzire win September's Procore Championship.
Previously, both DeChambeau and McIlroy have voiced their concerns over the disappointing viewing figures amid the division at the top of the men’s professional game.
Before April’s LIV Golf Miami, DeChambeau said an agreement needs to happen “fast” as “too many people are losing interest,” while ahead of the Valero Texas Open the same month, McIlroy said: “I know this isn’t a be-all, end-all, but if you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20 percent across the board. That’s a fifth. That’s big.”
On the plus side, DeChambeau and McIlroy’s US Open tussle, which saw the LIV Golf star claim victory, led to an 11-year NBC record, with the overall final-round coverage producing a Total Audience Delivery of 5.9m viewers in a seven-hour window.
