A season of viewership highs for the PGA Tour ended with one of the strongest audiences in years for the season-ending TOUR Championship.
Sunday’s final round of The TOUR Championship, the final event of the FedEx Cup and PGA Tour season, averaged 4.76 million viewers on CBS across its full telecast window and 5.73 million for the back nine, both the highest for the event since Tiger Woods’ 2018 victory on NBC.
Scottie Scheffler’s win, which peaked with 6.7 million, increased 17% from last year, when NBC averaged 4.1 million across Nielsen (3.9M) and Adobe Analytics. For the back nine, viewership increased 28% from last year’s 4.5 million.
The full telecast window delivered the fifth-largest audience of the PGA Tour season, behind the third and final rounds of the Masters (8.1M; 14.0M) and the final rounds of the PGA Championship (5.8M) and U.S. Open (5.5M per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics). The back nine ranks fourth for the season behind only the Masters telecasts and the final round of the PGA.
The TOUR Championship concluded a strong season that saw numerous tournaments hit final round highs, including four-year highs for the British Open, PLAYERS Championship, Colonial and Cognizant (Honda) Classic, five-year highs for the PGA Championship, Arnold Palmer Invitational and Torrey Pines, 11-year highs for the Masters, Wyndham Championship and Memorial, a 19-year high for the BMW Championship, a 22-year high for the Byron Nelson, and a 24-year high for the Travelers.
Note that this was the first full PGA Tour season since Nielsen expanded its out-of-home viewing sample to cover 100 percent of markets and shifted to a new methodology that integrates “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes with its traditional panel.
The full golf season on CBS averaged 3.43 million viewers, up 15% from last year and the network’s most-watched season since 2009. The network posted gains for 18 of 21 telecasts that can be compared to last year. NBC averaged 3.2 million for its golf coverage, which concluded with the British Open, up 10%.
