After plunging to an all-time low opposite NFL games last September, the U.S. Open final round surged back to health in its return to Father’s Day.
The final round of golf’s U.S. Open at Torrey Pines averaged a 3.2 rating and 5.67 million viewers on NBC Sunday, trailing only the 2019 final round at Pebble Beach (7.31M) as the most-watched at the tournament since 2015 (Chambers Bay: 6.69M).
Ratings jumped 60% and viewership 77% from last year’s record-low final round at Winged Foot (N.Y.), which aired opposite NFL games in September (2.0, 3.2M), but declined 27% and 22% respectively from the aforementioned 2019 tournament.
John Rahm’s win, which peaked with 8.93 million viewers from 8-8:15 PM ET, delivered NBC’s largest golf audience since Tiger Woods’ drought-ending win at the 2018 Tour Championship (5.89M). For the season, it ranks third among golf telecasts behind the final round of the Masters (9.45M) and the final round of Phil Mickelson’s win at the PGA Championship (6.58M), both of which aired on CBS.
For the weekend, Sunday’s telecast ranked third among sporting events behind a pair of NBA Game 7s — Bucks-Nets on Saturday (6.91M) and Hawks-Sixers on Sunday (6.16M), both on TNT. It did top an NBA game head-to-head, beating Game 1 of the Clippers-Suns Western Conference Finals on ABC (4.53M).
Third round action the previous day pulled a 2.1 and 3.35 million, up 11% in ratings and 10% in viewership from last year opposite college football (1.9, 3.04M), but down 25% and 20% respectively from 2019 (2.8, 4.20M).
The complete U.S. Open averaged 3.1 million viewers across NBC and Golf Channel (including additional streaming data not tracked by Nielsen), up 43% from last year and the second-largest audience for the event in the past six years. The 2019 tournament, the only U.S. Open since 2013 in which Tiger Woods made the cut, averaged 3.7 million on FOX and FS1. Other than that, no U.S. Open has averaged a larger audience since Chambers Bay in ’15 (3.5M).
NBC and Golf Channel combined to average 1.7 million for early round coverage, including 1.4 million for Friday’s second round action on Golf Channel — the network’s largest weekday audience on record.
So far, the final rounds of all three golf majors have increased double-digits over last year’s months-delayed editions. The final round of the Masters soared 69% over last year’s November edition, averaging 9.45 million viewers. The PGA Championship, fueled by Mickelson, jumped a more modest 28% (with the caveat that last year’s PGA, postponed to what had originally been its normal time of year in August, was actually up from the previous year).
[Nielsen estimates from NBC Sports]
