PGA Tour numbers dip on TV in 2024, but is help on the way from ...
NBC saw its golf viewership fall 5% this year compared to last year’s weekend rounds.getty images
There were many big storylines on the PGA Tour in 2024. Scottie Scheffler made a Tiger Woods-like run with seven wins. Xander Schauffele finally won a major; two, in fact. But along with the good storylines came a less-than-positive one: the tour’s TV numbers.
The TV discussion was a hard one to ignore throughout the year, with even Rory McIlroy wading into the discourse by calling out the tour’s “jarring” drops this spring.
Digging into the numbers, the tour averaged 2.2 million viewers for its Sunday telecasts (no majors) in 2024, a drop of 19% from 2.7 million in 2023. With majors included, that Sunday number in 2024 jumps to 2.8 million. On Saturdays, the tour earned 1.5 million viewers, down 17% from 1.8 million last year.
On NBC, the tour averaged just more than 2 million viewers for all tour events (no streaming included), down 5% from last year’s weekend rounds on NBC (which did not include the playoffs, as those were on CBS in 2023).
On Sunday only, NBC in 2024 drew 2.35 million, down 2% from 2023. Removing the three FedEx Cup Playoffs events from NBC’s average this year, that average goes to 1.98 million, which would be 6% lower compared to last year on NBC.
Not even the outstanding play of Scottie Scheffler was enough to reverse the viewership trend.getty images
On CBS, the tour averaged 1.79 million viewers across 16 events and 30 weekend telecasts (two rounds not played due to weather). That’s down 17% from last year, when CBS drew 2.17 million viewers across 21 events (when it had the FedEx Cup Playoffs).
Removing the postseason events in 2023, CBS’s average would be 2.09 million, which would put this year at a smaller 14% drop.
Myriad factors likely contributed to the drops. There was no final round at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am due to weather. The final round of the WM Phoenix Open stretched to nearly halftime of the Super Bowl, again because of lengthy weather delays early in the week.
More bad weather pushed a number of tournaments to Monday finishes, including the Cognizant Classic in the Palm Beaches and signature event RBC Heritage. Several tournaments in late summer had to deal with the Paris Olympics this year, which likely siphoned off additional viewers.
Perhaps biggest of all? The ongoing saga with LIV Golf. First, the tour again was missing big names including Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Phil Mickelson, among others, who had moved over to LIV.
Additionally, many fans have cited fatigue over golf’s war with that has now gone on for three years. And this was the first full season in which the tour has been making an effort to do a deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
Linear drops aside, the tour paints a more positive outlook regarding 2024’s numbers. Commissioner Jay Monahan at the Tour Championship pointed out that the tour’s overall media consumption in aggregate was up in 2024.
On social, the tour had 113.1 million social video views in 2024, growth of 6% over 2023. Users of the PGA Tour app and official website were up 10% in 2024, while overall visits to those same platforms were up 17% in total.
As for streaming, ESPN+ said it saw a 15% increase in average minutes watched in 2024 for its PGA Tour Live product. The tour streams 40-plus hours of product per week.
Maybe biggest of all, Monahan in Atlanta brought up the changes Nielsen is beginning to implement with measurement. The company this year made public its plans to add more “big data” to its measurement numbers, which would incorporate more streaming and OTT platforms. Those changes would be particularly positive for the tour starting next year, according to a Nielsen spokesperson.
According to Nielsen, when implementing big data, the tour’s weekend broadcast coverage in 2023 would see a 17% increase. In 2024, those numbers jump to a 20% increase, the spokesperson said, which would be among the largest for a major stick-and-ball sport.
So while the tour’s linear broadcasts still saw substantial dips in 2024, a shift may be coming.
Austin Karp contributed to this report.
