With Tiger Woods again in striking distance to end his championship drought, PGA Championship ratings hit multi-year highs on CBS and TNT Saturday.
Saturday’s third round of the PGA Championship earned a 3.7 overnight rating on CBS, up 54% from last year (2.4), up 147% from rainout coverage in 2016 (1.5), and the highest for third round coverage of the event since 2009 (4.9).
The telecast, which peaked at a 4.4 from 6-6:30 PM ET, earned a higher overnight than last year’s final round (3.6). It also outdrew the final round of this year’s U.S. Open on FOX (3.6).
For the season, only the Masters had a higher third round rating in the metered markets (5.7). Regardless of round, Saturday’s 3.7 was the sixth-highest overnight of the season — behind the third and final rounds of the Masters and the final rounds at Tampa Bay (5.1), the British Open (5.0) and the Players Championship (4.2).
Host-city St. Louis led all markets with a 9.0, followed by Ft. Myers, Fla. (7.1), Dayton, Ohio (6.6), Nashville (6.1) and Louisville (6.0).
Lead-in coverage on TNT had 1.8 million viewers, per Nielsen fast-nationals — up 40% from last year and the network’s largest PGA Championship audience since 2010. That year, the network earned 2.0 and 2.3 million for third and final round coverage respectively.
[Numbers from CBS Sports PR 8.12, Turner Sports PR/Twitter 8.12]
