Four stars and four networks combined to deliver golf’s largest cable television audience on record.
The latest edition of “The Match” — pitting Tiger Woods and Peyton Manning against Phil Mickelson and Tom Brady — averaged 5.8 million viewers across TBS, TNT, TruTV and HLN Sunday afternoon, the largest golf audience ever on cable.
The telecast, which peaked with 6.3 million viewers from 5:45-6 PM ET, topped the previous record of 4.9 million for the first round of the 2010 Masters on ESPN — Woods’ first tournament after a tabloid scandal.
Based on overnight ratings, “The Match” was television’s top program of the day, evidently topping the NASCAR Coca-Cola 600 on FOX.
Since the majority of sporting events were called off on March 11-12, it ranks at best seventh among sportscasts — behind the first two nights of the NFL Draft, at least three episodes of the ESPN docuseries “The Last Dance” and the previous weekend’s NASCAR race at Darlington (6.32M).
Viewership more-than-doubled the previous weekend’s “Driving Relief” charity event on the NBC family of networks, which saw Rory McIlroy compete against Dustin Johnson, Rickie Fowler and Matthew Wolff (2.35M).
“The Match” ranks as easily the most-watched golf telecast on any network this year, with the caveat that the season’s first two majors — the Masters and PGA Championship — were postponed. Notably, it averaged more viewers than the final rounds of last year’s PGA Championship (5.0M) and British Open (3.7M).
The previous edition of “The Match” in November 2018, in which Woods and Mickelson squared off in a one-on-one for $9 million, aired on pay-per-view.
[Nielsen estimates from Turner Sports]
