Airing on several hours delay, last week’s Deutsche Bank Championship tied its lowest final round rating.
Tape delayed final round coverage of the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second leg of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup, had a 1.5 final rating and 2.3 million viewers on NBC last Monday, down 25% in ratings and 22% in viewership from last year (2.0, 3.0M) and down 12% and 8%, respectively, from 2014 (1.7, 2.5M).
The 1.5 is tied as the lowest yet for final round coverage of the tournament (dating back to 2003), matching 2008. That low comes with a caveat; because play was moved up several hours to avoid rain, NBC aired its entire telecast on tape delay.
Keeping that in mind, ratings and viewership have declined for each of the past seven final round PGA telecasts, with six of those seven hitting multi-year lows. Dating back to the start of June, 11 of the past 13 final round windows have declined — not including this past weekend’s BMW Championship, final figures for which were not yet available.
Live third round action the previous day had a 1.3 and 2.0 million, down 28% in ratings and 25% in viewership from lats year (1.8, 2.7M) and down 13% and 10%, respectively, from 2014 (1.5, 2.2M).
(Numbers from NBC Sports, ShowBuzz Daily)
