Since the new NFL season began in early September, TV viewing figures in relation to golf have taken a pretty significant nosedive – although, that is no real surprise.
Looking at historical patterns, the sport which involves flag hunting has almost always taken a backseat to the game in which players try to avoid a flag, but the sheer scale of what is taking place in 2024 could be seen as fairly concerning for golf’s stakeholders.
Over the course of the entire 2024 regular PGA Tour season, including the four Major championships, an average of 2.8 million people tuned in to watch Sunday’s action.
That number drops to 2.2 million if The Masters, The Open Championship, the US Open, and the PGA Championship are excluded and is around 20% down (2.7m) on its previous year, according to Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter.
It should be noted, however, that those numbers are for linear TV viewing and do not including streaming, which is becoming an increasingly popular way for fans to watch golf – especially the younger ones.
An average TV audience of 2.7 million watched Scottie Scheffler win the Tour Championship
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Nevertheless, the comparative data for the first three events of the 2024 FedEx Cup Fall series is far from ideal.
At the Procore Championship – the opening FedEx Cup Fall tournament which took place between September 12-15 – an average of 69,000 people tuned in on Golf Channel to watch Patton Kizzire blitz the field by five at Silverado Resort’s North Course. According to Golf.com, that is over 75% down on the same tournament 12 months prior, at which Sahith Theegala triumphed by two strokes.
Meanwhile, the LIV Golf League’s Individual Championship round was only watched by around 89,000 on The CW that same weekend as Jon Rahm just pipped Joaquin Niemann to the title in his debut year.
In the Procore Championship’s case, at least, it’s not quite as simple as the majority of people just completely losing interest like that. On the one hand, there was NFL on at the same time, and on another, the Solheim Cup had taken up a lot of people’s time after recently morphing into a tighter-than-expected finish at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
And while the finale of the Procore Championship was a disappointing one in terms of PGA Tour engagement,…
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