Scottie Scheffler’s historic victory at the Players Championship last week was a timely reminder that the PGA Tour is still capable of producing thrilling events for golf fans.
But a recent trend of falling viewership suggests that the tour still leaves much to be desired when it comes to attracting fans, two years into its battle with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf.
According to viewership stats reported by Sports TV Ratings on Twitter, NBC’s coverage of Sunday’s Players Championship drew 3.5 million viewers, a 17 per cent drop from last year’s final round of 4.1m.
NBC draws 3.5M viewers for Scottie Scheffler's win in the Players Championship (per @SportsTVRatings), down from 4.1M last year.Two years ago: 2.9M for Sunday coverage (Cam Smith won on a Monday). 2021: 4.6M for Justin Thomas. pic.twitter.com/pfMbbvtPO8March 19, 2024
In fact, according to Sports Media Watch, the 2024 Players Championship was the least-watched final round for the event billed as “golf’s fifth major” in the past 10 years, with the exception of 2022 (2.91m) when the tournament concluded on Monday due to weather delays.
The decline in viewership has been a worrying trend for the PGA Tour this year, with only 2.3m viewers reportedly tuning in to NBC’s final-round broadcast of the Arnold Palmer Invitational – also won by Scottie Scheffler – the previous week, a 30 per cent drop from last year’s 3.3m when Kurt Kitayama claimed the title.
The PGA Tour’s other signature events followed a similar decline, with ratings for the final round of the Genesis Invitational down five per cent from 3.4m in 2023 – which was won by new LIV Golf recruit Jon Rahm – to 3.2m this year. Even the opening round of the event at Riviera, which included Tiger Woods, performed poorly compared to last year, seeing a drop of 51 per cent.
Meanwhile, the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was a disaster for the PGA Tour, with weather conditions forcing the final round to be delayed and eventually canceled, allowing LIV’s Mayakoba event on the Sunday – which drew 432,000 viewers – to hog the spotlight.
Last month's Mexico Open, which saw American rookie Jake Knapp claim his maiden tour title, also marked a fourth consecutive Sunday where viewership dropped compared to last year.
Tiger Woods playing just once, a run of outsider winners, missing LIV superstars and increasing fatigue over the ongoing negotiations between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund are certainly factors that may have contributed to the year-on-year declines.
The reception towards PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan at the Players Championship prize ceremony further highlighted golf fans’ growing feelings of frustration towards the tour and its leadership.
PGA Tour pro Billy Horschel echoed similar sentiments, telling Golfweek: “I, for one, as a golf fan, am tired of it. I think this whole bickering and taking shots at each other just needs to go away. If coming together gets that to go away and we get a deal done with PIF, that’s great.
“Now how does that turn into [LIV] players coming back to the PGA Tour? I don’t know.”
Rory McIlroy, who remains one of Monahan’s biggest supporters, said more focus on the game itself is needed to “re-engage” fans.
“If you look at the leaderboards, you look at the ratings, I felt like they really, really worked in 2023,” McIlroy said ahead of the Players Championship. “And for whatever reason, they’re not quite capturing the imagination this year compared to last year.
“I think, if I were to put my own perspective on it, it’s because fans are fatigued of what’s going on in the game. And I think we need to try to re-engage the fan and re-engage them in a way that the focus is on the play and not on talking about equity and all the rest of it.”
A memorable, grandstand finish at the Players Championship saw the PGA Tour receive its best viewing figures of the year to date.
However, it's clear that more needs to be done to keep fans coming back in this fractured era of men's professional golf.
