The Chevron Championship’s move from California to Texas might not have been popular with LPGA players, but the tour’s first major of the year was a bona fide success in terms of its television audience, according to numbers that were unveiled early this week.
The final round of coverage from The Club at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands averaged 941,000 viewers across all platforms, including NBC Sports, the NBC Sports app and Peacock, which is up considerably from the 349,000 average viewers when the event was on Golf Channel last year.
But things really heated up when champ Lilia Vu and Angel Yin went to a playoff, with a peak of 1.54 million viewers or a 1.0 rating between 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. ET. Yin went in the water as the two played 18 again in the playoff, and Vu dropped a birdie putt to capture her first major title.
The tournament’s numbers were clearly aided by a schedule move away from the Augusta National Women’s Amateur and into a better timeslot against the PGA Tour’s Zurich Classic.
Other important stats:
- This year’s event was the most-watched since 2010 and was the best for NBC Sports
- The Chevron was the top-rated sports program on NBC for the week
- It was also in the top 20 sports programs for the week across all broadcast networks
- Even though it falls in the heart of a busy week that included NBA and NHL playoffs, Major League Baseball games and the PGA Tour’s Zurich, Sunday’s broadcast of the Chevron was among the top 10 sports broadcasts for the day
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