As it has for tennis, basketball and hockey in the past, the Olympics gave golf a major viewership bump in the sport’s return to the Games.
Final round coverage of the Olympic golf tournament earned a 5.6 rating and 8.8 million viewers during the 90-minute window in which coverage aired on both NBC and Golf Channel, according to Nielsen fast-nationals — the highest rated 90-minute period of any final round this year outside of The Masters. NBC’s simulcast aired live in the Eastern and Central time zones but was delayed three hours in the Mountain and Pacific.
On Golf Channel alone, three hours of afternoon coverage pulled a 1.0 and 1.6 million viewers — the network’s top audience in the early Sunday window since final round coverage of the 2012 Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, which featured Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in the final pairing (1.5, 2.3M).
Six hours of morning coverage scored 556,000 viewers, Golf Channel’s top audience in that window since Woods’ win in the 2008 Dubai Desert Classic (556K).
Golf is not the first mainstream sport to get an Olympic bump. The two highest rated and most-watched tennis matches in the past 14 years took place in the 2012 Olympics, Serena Williams‘ win over Maria Sharapova in the women’s final (5.6, 7.9M) and Andy Murray/Roger Federer in the men’s the next day (5.5, 8.2M).
The same year, three USA women’s basketball games averaged more than 10 million viewers on NBC, more than any non-Olympic game on record. Similarly, the Canada/United States men’s hockey final in the 2010 Winter Olympics scored 27.6 million viewers — more than double the most-watched NHL game in U.S. TV history.
Golf’s Olympic bump is modest by comparison, comparable more to men’s basketball. The 2012 men’s basketball final was one of the most-watched games that year, but trailed all five games of the NBA Finals and all three of the Final Four. In other words, good numbers, but not the pinnacle of the sport.
In other action, third round coverage scored a 0.7 and 967,000 on Golf Channel early Saturday afternoon, the network’s second-best performance in that window this year. Morning coverage had a 0.3 and 449,000.
(Sun. numbers from NBC Sports Group Press Box)
