Ratings Predictions: The Masters & More

The story of the PGA Tour season has been Tiger Woods’ return to prominence, with his Top 5 finishes at Tampa Bay and Bay Hill delivering triple-digit ratings increases. So far this season, Woods has played eight rounds that have aired on broadcast television. All eight have posted an increase in ratings, five of those by at least 75 percent.

Woods’ impact on the ratings is still, as Sean McManus put it many years ago, “mathematical and predicable.” The PGA is hit-or-miss without him, but this season it has been more the former than the latter. Of the 12 other windows on broadcast this season, seven have posted an increase. Of the five exceptions, four aired opposite the Winter Olympics.

Hopes were high entering The Masters that Woods would repeat his Florida success, but he enters the weekend well out of contention. Woods’ mere presence will be enough to boost ratings past last year’s historically low marks — a 4.3 on Saturday and 6.8 on Sunday — but had he been in contention, CBS could have been looking at one of the higher ratings in recent Masters history. As it is, just making it back to 2015 levels (a 5.8 on Saturday and 8.7 on Sunday) would qualify as a success.

With Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and a handful of other familiar names in contention, it should still be a good weekend for CBS. Predictions: 5.5 and 8.3.

The NBA TV ratings surge has slowed in recent months, but especially over the last couple of weeks. It is likely that the league will finish this season with a modest increase over last year and a slight decline from two years ago. That is a great result given TV’s overall decline, but also short of the ratings bonanza that seemed destined earlier in the year.

ABC concludes its regular season coverage with a star-studded matchup of superteams, one an NBA title favorite, the other a profound disappointment. Given the stars on the court, Rockets-Thunder should post a big increase over Clippers-Spurs last year (1.3), though do not expect the kind of blockbuster numbers (by regular season standards) that ABC was getting earlier in the season. Prediction: 1.9.

One week after winning the women’s basketball championship on a shot at the buzzer, Notre Dame is back for more in Saturday’s NCAA men’s hockey final. It has been seven years since a program of Notre Dame’s stature made the men’s hockey final — Michigan in 2011. That built-in audience of alumni could make a big difference considering how small the ratings usually are. It would not take much to boost the numbers well beyond last year’s 0.25. Prediction: 0.32.

Mets-Nationals is one of ESPN’s favorite Sunday Night Baseball matchups for reasons that are not readily apparent. This week marks the teams’ fifth Sunday night meeting in the past four seasons, tying Giants-Dodgers, Cardinals-Cubs and Cardinals-Pirates as the second-most frequent SNB matchup over that span. (The most frequent is so obvious that it need not even be said.) Yet three of the teams’ previous four meetings have had less than a 1.0 rating, including two with a mere 0.6 (admittedly airing against live NFL coverage). Do not expect this week’s game to do much better. Prediction: 0.9.