Sports Ratings Tracker

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour BMW Championship averaged a 2.2 rating and 3.85 million viewers on CBS a week ago Sunday, marking the largest audience for the tournament since the inaugural edition in 2007, won by Tiger Woods.

Wyndham Clark’s win, which averaged 5.17 million in the final hour and peaked with 5.50 million, increased about 10% from last year’s final round on NBC (3.5M per Nielsen and Adobe Analytics).

Third round action averaged a 1.4 and 2.43 million, bringing the two-day average to 3.24 million — also the highest since 2007.

Last weekend’s final round of the PGA Tour FedEx St. Jude Championship averaged a 2.2 rating and 3.79 million viewers on CBS, on par with last year, when coverage aired on NBC and averaged 3.80 million across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics.

Scottie Scheffler’s win, which peaked with 4.90 million viewers, delivered the largest Nielsen-measured audience for the first leg of the FedEx Cup since 2013, and the second-largest overall behind last year’s combined Nielsen + Adobe figure.

Third round action drew a 1.6 and 2.87 million, surpassing last year (2.28M) to rank as the highest for the third round of the tournament since the FedEx Cup Playoffs began in 2007.

Last weekend’s final round of the PGA Tour Wyndham Championship averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.59 million viewers on CBS, the highest for the event since 2015.

Michael Brennan’s win, which peaked with 3.96 million, increased a third over last year’s final round.

Third round action drew a 1.0 and 1.79 million.

Last Sunday’s final round of the PGA Tour Rocket Classic from Detroit averaged a 1.8 rating and 3.23 million viewers on CBS, marking the highest final round average on record for the tournament, which began in 2019.

Michael Thorbjornsen’s win increased 16% from last year’s final round, which took place in June (2.80M). The peak quarter-hour — just shy of 4.0 million — actually finished well below last year’s (5.13M).

Third round action last Saturday drew a 1.3 and 2.26 million. CBS is averaging 3.46 million viewers for the season, up 17% from last year and its highest average since 2006.

Last weekend’s final round of the PGA TOUR 3M Open from Minneapolis averaged a 2.1 rating and 3.71 million viewers on CBS, marking the largest audience on record for the event (debuted in 2019).

21-year-old Jackson Koivun’s win, which peaked with 4.87 million viewers, increased 100% from last year (1.85M).

The telecast was the most-watched sporting event of the weekend, ahead of the previous night’s WNBA All-Star Game (3.16M) and the Yankees-Phillies “Sunday Night Baseball” game on NBC later in the evening (3.15M).

Third round action averaged a 1.2 and 2.04 million — itself higher than any final round of the tournament since 2020.

Final round coverage of the Scottish Open golf tournament averaged a 1.2 rating and 1.944 million viewers on CBS last Sunday, virtually even with the live portion of last year’s final round, which ended about an hour earlier than scheduled due to inclement weather (1.943M). (Compared to last year’s full window, which included 45 minutes of replay coverage, viewership increased 16% from 1.67 million.)

This year’s audience ranks as the second-highest on record for the event, behind 2022 (2.17M).

Third round action had a 0.9 and 1.75 million the previous day, the highest in at least 20 years, bringing the two-day average to 1.84 million — the highest on record for the event.

The week prior to the U.S. Open, the final round of the PGA Tour Canadian Open averaged 2.34 million viewers on CBS — down slightly from last year’s 2.38 million. Third round action drew 1.68 million the previous day.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Memorial Tournament averaged 3.34 million viewers on CBS Sunday, officially marking the highest average for the event since 2015 (3.37M). (Note that Nielsen methodological changes skew comparisons to past years, particularly those prior to 2020, when the company began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates.)

J.T. Poston’s win, which peaked with 4.84 million viewers during the playoff, increased 9% from last year (3.06M).

Last weekend’s final round of the PGA Tour at Colonial averaged a 1.4 rating and 2.40 million viewers on CBS, marking the top audience for the event in four years. (Note that changes in Nielsen methodology skew comparisons to past years.)

The telecast, which peaked with 3.44 million viewers during the playoff, increased 13% from last year (2.11M).

Third round action averaged a 1.1 and 2.00 million the previous day. CBS is now averaging 3.94 million viewers for golf coverage this year, up 14% from last year and its highest average since 2011.

Final round coverage of the PGA TOUR Byron Nelson averaged 3.50 million viewers on CBS, up 20% from last year and the highest average for the event since 2004. (Note that Nielsen methodological changes skew comparisons to all past years, particularly those prior to 2020, when the company began including out-of-home viewing in its estimates.)

Saturday coverage averaged 2.83 million, also the highest since 2004, with the full weekend up 43% to 3.17 million.

CBS golf coverage is averaging 4.08 million viewers this season, up 16% from last year and officially the highest average at this point of a season since 2007.

Final round coverage of The PLAYERS Championship averaged 4.4 million viewers across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, marking the highest average for the event since 2021. Third round coverage averaged 3.1 million, also the highest since 2021.

Compared to last year, viewership increased 13% on Saturday and 15% on Sunday, outside the range that would be explained by Nielsen’s shift last fall to “Big Data + Panel” methodology.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Arnold Palmer Invitational averaged 3.3 million viewers on NBC across Nielsen (1.8 rating, 3.18M) and Adobe Analytics, marking the largest audience for the event since 2021.

(Note that changes in Nielsen methodology — specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to a new methodology that adds “Big Data” to its traditional panel — will generally skew comparisons to past years.)

Final round coverage of the Cognizant (formerly Honda) Classic averaged a Nielsen-only 1.4 rating and 2.51 million viewers on NBC last weekend, with that figure rising to 2.6 million including streaming data tracked by Adobe Analytics — the highest for the tournament since 2022.

Keep in mind that changes in Nielsen methodology (specifically the expansion of its out-of-home viewing sample and shift to “Big Data + Panel” methodology) generally skew comparisons to past years.

The four-week PGA Tour “West Coast swing” averaged 2.70 million viewers on CBS, up 19% from last year and the highest average since 2021 (2.87M). (Keep in mind that prior season averages are based on Nielsen averages with smaller out-of-home viewership samples and zero “Big Data” from smart TVs and set-top boxes.)

Last weekend’s final round of the Genesis Invitational (Riviera) averaged a 1.8 rating and 3.27 million viewers on CBS, down from last year, when the tournament took place at Torrey Pines due to fires in usual host city Los Angeles (3.4M).

The previous week’s final round at Pebble Beach averaged a 1.7 and 3.30 million, also down slightly from last year (3.33M).

On Super Bowl Sunday, the final round at Phoenix was originally reported to have drawn a 1.9 and 3.78 million — a figure that has almost certainly been revised since, as Nielsen said last week that all of its February 8 data was affected by a data reporting error. Viewership was up 32% from last year before any revisions, and it was unlikely that any corrections would meaningfully change that margin.

Finally, as previously noted, the final round at Torrey Pines more-than-doubled last year, with the caveat that the tournament returned to a traditional Sunday finish for the first time since 2021.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour at Torrey Pines averaged a 1.6 rating and 2.92 million viewers on CBS last Sunday, the highest for the tournament since the last time it concluded on a Sunday in 2021 (3.15M). The event used an unusual Wednesday-Saturday scheduling format from 2022-25, which negatively impacted viewership.

Third round coverage the previous day drew a 1.1 and 1.88 million, also the highest since 2021.

On Golf Channel, coverage of the tournament averaged 542,000 — the highest since 2020 — topping out at 960,000 for the final round.

NBC averaged 2.38 million viewers for coverage of the PGA TOUR this season, up 18% from last year. That is in line with the 17% increase CBS posted for its coverage, which averaged 2.97 million viewers.

The main portion of last weekend’s final round of the TOUR Championship, the final event of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup, averaged 4.5 million viewers on NBC (not including streaming viewership tracked by Adobe Analytics) — the second-largest audience for the tournament since 2018.

Only the main final round window two years ago averaged a larger audience (4.6M), and that was primarily because it aired in a later and shorter window due to inclement weather.

The full TOUR Championship averaged 2.0 million viewers, up 59% from last year and the highest since — of all years — 2020.

The prior week’s final round of the BMW Championship averaged 3.5 million viewers, up 43% from last year, with the full four-round average of 1.6 million up 30%.

NBC coverage of the PGA Tour St. Jude Championship from Memphis, the first event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, averaged 3.8 million viewers last Sunday and 2.3 million last Saturday (Nielsen + Adobe Analytics) — the highest for the tournament, which traces back to old Westchester Classic rather than the Memphis-based St. Jude Classic, since 2013 and 2018 respectively.

Viewership increased 66 and 53 percent respectively from last year on CBS.

Lead-in coverage on Golf Channel averaged 843,000 on Sunday and 901,000 on Saturday, also marking multi-year highs.

The full tournament averaged 1.9 million viewers across NBC platforms, making it the most-watched since 2018. The weekend rounds on NBC and Golf Channel averaged 3.2 million, the highest since 2011. (In addition to the usual out-of-home viewing caveats, keep in mind that most of the prior year comparisons are Nielsen-only.)

Last Sunday’s final round of the PGA Tour Wyndham Championship averaged 1.95 million viewers on CBS, up 36% from last year and a five-year high. CBS finished its golf season averaging 2.97 million viewers, up 17% from last year and the highest average since 2018, with 14 of the network’s 19 final round telecasts posting an increase.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Twin Cities tournament averaged 1.85 million viewers on CBS, up 11% from the previous non-Olympic edition two years ago (1.67M). (Compared to last year’s final round, which aired opposite the Olympics, viewership increased 40% from 1.32 million.)

Last Sunday’s final round of the British Open averaged a combined 4.1 million viewers on NBC across Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, marking the highest average since 2022 (4.73M). Scottie Scheffler’s win, which peaked with 6.1 million in the 1:30 PM ET quarter-hour, increased 21% over last year (3.39M).

The full weekend averaged 3.6 million, up 22% from last year — and the full four-day average increased 16% to what NBC said was “more than two million.”

Sunday’s final round of the Scottish Open golf tournament averaged 1.67 million viewers for the full three-hour telecast window, but 1.94 million for the portion that actually featured live golf. The latter figure would be the second-highest on record for the tournament, behind 2.17 million in 2022.

Due to weather concerns, the start of play was moved up and the final round concluded about 45 minutes early. CBS aired a replay of the conclusion during that final portion of the broadcast.

On Saturday, third round coverage drew 1.42 million — up 4% from last year and the highest on record (dating back to 2006).

Sunday’s final round of the PGA TOUR John Deere Classic averaged 2.7 million viewers on CBS, marking the highest average for the tournament in a decade. Brian Campbell’s playoff victory, which peaked with 3.7 million viewers, increased 28% from last year.

CBS is now averaging 3.18 million viewers for PGA TOUR coverage this season, up 13% from last year and the highest at this point of the season since 2018.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour Detroit tournament averaged 2.8 million viewers on CBS, marking the largest audience for the event since 2020, when it was one of the first PGA Tour events following the COVID hiatus (2.89M).

Aldrich Potgieter‘s playoff win, which peaked with 5.13 million, increased 13% from last year.

Final round coverage of the PGA Tour from Hartford averaged 3.52 million viewers on CBS Sunday, up 35% from last year and behind only 2021 as the largest audience for the tournament since 2003.

Keegan Bradley’s comeback win — which peaked with a whopping 5.4 million viewers — delivered the third-largest audience of the season outside of the majors, behind the final rounds of the Heritage (4.36M) and The PLAYERS Championship (3.66M, including Adobe Analytics).