Ratings: BIG3, NFL Preseason, PGA Tour

BIG3 coverage featuring the Power-Three’s Company league championship earned a 0.7 rating and 1.00 million viewers on FOX Friday night, up 40% in ratings and 28% in viewership from last year, when the game took place on a Saturday afternoon (0.49, 787K).

The game was the highest rated and most-watched telecast in the two-year history of the BIG3, topping the previous highs of 0.6 and 921,000 earlier this season.

To put the numbers in perspective, the game would have ranked 159th out of the 171 NBA regular season telecasts on ESPN, TNT and ABC last season. Compared to other summer basketball events, the game outdrew all of this year’s NBA Summer League games, every WNBA telecast since 2008, and every game in the history of The Basketball Tournament — with the caveat that none of those events have ever aired on primetime broadcast television.

Friday’s Lions-Buccaneers NFL preseason game, which was delayed an hour due to lightning, had a 2.1 rating and 3.23 million viewers on CBS — down 34% in ratings and 38% in viewership from last year (Chiefs-Seahawks: 3.2, 5.22M) and down 22% and 20% respectively from 2016 (Browns-Bucs: 2.7, 4.06M).

Later in the night, NFL Network scored 764,000 for Packers-Raiders — down 17% from Packers-49ers two years ago (918K). Both games were joined in progress; there was no comparable window last year.

Second round coverage of the PGA Tour Northern Trust (formerly the Barclays) earned 846,000 viewers on Golf Channel Friday afternoon — up 35% from last year (627K) and up 47% from 2016 (577K) and the tournament’s largest cable audience since 2013. That year, Golf Channel pulled 978,000 for second round coverage and 1.05 million for a third round lead-in.

Though he was not in contention, Tiger Woods played the event for the first time since 2015.

Last Thursday’s opening round pulled 497,000, up 27% from last year (390K) and the highest since 2015 (583K).