There is an old adage that voters vote with their pocketbooks, which may or may not be true based on various studies.
Does that translate to golf on television? Are fans – and there is no denying the television viewing numbers are down – voting with their remote controls?
It seems that way, and it’s not a stretch to point to the ongoing battle between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf as the contributing factor to the declining numbers.
The bickering, the constant talk about money, the splintered landscape where the game’s stars are on opposite sides has undeniably dulled the shine on professional golf.
“I think people are just sick of the narrative in golf being about, you know, contracts on LIV, purses on the tour, guaranteed comp on the tour. I think people are so sick of that,” Peter Malnati said last week in Houston.
He’s right.
The conflict is at the core of the diminished numbers, but is that the only reason the television audience for the final round of the Players Championship (won by world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler) was down from an average of 4.14 million viewers in 2022 to 3.53 million this year?
What about the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational (also won by Scheffler), which had a 30 percent ratings decline on Sunday?
It has been a challenging spring for the PGA Tour. Three events were seriously impacted by weather issues, including the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am which effectively ended on Saturday because the final round was canceled. The Saturday telecast of the WM Phoenix Open featured Martin Laird teeing off at 4:10 p.m. Eastern time – to start his third round – and the final round ran deep into the Super Bowl window.
Scheffler has been brilliant, but he hasn’t yet shown himself to be a needle mover.
There have been six winners so far who ranked outside the top 100 in the world at the time of their victories. They are individually good stories, but they are not stars.
Until Scheffler’s recent winning streak, the stars had underdelivered. Scheffler has been brilliant, but he hasn’t yet shown himself to be a needle mover.
Tiger Woods has played once and withdrew after 24 holes due to illness. Rory McIlroy does not have a top-15 finish in five starts. Jordan Spieth flashed early then had a disqualification and two missed cuts in four events. Justin Thomas is still trying to play his way back into form.
“Ratings are down,” said Laura Neal, the PGA Tour’s executive vice president, brand communications. “Can we link that directly to the conflict and fans being fatigued and annoyed or bored or whatever you might say? Simple answer is, yes-ish. But there’s more to it. We have growth in other important areas.”
The ratings question will come into sharper focus next week at the Masters. It is annually the most watched golf event of the year (last year, it averaged 12.058 million viewers, peaking at 15.021 at 7 p.m., according to CBS Sports, to be the most watched golf event on network television in five years), and it will be the first time this year that all of the game’s top players will be competing at the same event.
Is the Masters immune from the fan fatigue that seems to have set in?
Is it as simple as having Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Bryson DeChambeau and Dustin Johnson back, even for a week?
Television industry insiders say the ratings are a direct result of the ongoing conflict which has turned many fans off. Aside from players banking multimillion-dollar paydays, there are no apparent winners and no end to the conflict in sight.
One industry source said the decision by Rahm, last year’s Masters champion, to leave the PGA Tour for LIV was a shot across the tour’s bow, and the sport finds itself at a potential tipping point. If Rahm could be bought, who else might follow?
The numbers aren’t bad enough to lead to contract renegotiations between the tour and its domestic media partners, but all sides see what is happening. Commissioner Jay Monahan has had direct discussions with network executives who raised questions about the trend.
“The narrative, the storylines, the conversation needs to come back to the product on the course and what we do,” said Malnati, one of six player directors on the PGA Tour Policy Board which will decide on any potential deal with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.
There may not be a better or more dramatic tournament this year than the Players Championship three weeks ago, but its ratings showed a noticeable drop.
Dig a little deeper and the picture may not be as discouraging as it seems.
According to the PGA Tour, peak viewership for the 2024 Players Championship reached 6.698 million viewers, fractionally ahead of last year, and 5.089 million were watching at the end, down from 5.438 million last year.
What isn’t measured is the viewership on various streaming platforms. PGA Tour on ESPN Plus is the most watched live action on the streaming platform and accounts for 12 percent of the content. The tour can’t release streaming numbers from its network partners.
“We’re looking at the holistic, cross-channel picture. You’re not going to change the behavior of a generation. All you can do is meet them where they are with great content.” – Travis Trembath
Some of it, tour officials stress, is the changing viewing habits across the board. Except for the NFL, sports viewing numbers are down. NBA ratings on ABC are down 12 percent this year, NHL ratings on ABC are down 6 percent and NASCAR ratings on Fox are down 3 percent from last year, according to the tour.
As for the all-important 18-34 demographic, linear television viewership has declined 80 percent over the last 10 years and 67 percent in the past five years.
“We are at this inflection point where in sports you’re seeing linear television ratings go down and you’re seeing growth in all these other mobile and streaming platforms,” said Travis Trembath, vice president of fan engagement for the PGA Tour. “We’re looking at the holistic, cross-channel picture. You’re not going to change the behavior of a generation. All you can do is meet them where they are with great content.”
The Nielsen ratings are not the be-all, end-all measurement they once were. The ratings are determined by 40,000 households (approximately 100,000 viewers) in which a special box monitors what is being watched and who is watching. In other words, if golf is on in a grillroom or in almost any home in the country, it doesn’t factor into the ratings which are based on an algorithm based on those 40,000 boxes.
That’s not to suggest the PGA Tour is not facing a serious challenge, but so is LIV Golf. Its viewing numbers are minuscule compared with the PGA Tour. The team format, the music, the shorts, the 54-hole format, those things have not translated into viewers.
The week when LIV went head to head with the PGA Tour’s rain-shortened event at Pebble Beach, LIV drew 168,000 viewers on Saturday compared to 1.95 million who watched Wyndham Clark shoot 60. With the Sunday round at Pebble Beach rained out, LIV drew 432,000 viewers – roughly one-third of what the tour drew, showing a replay of the third round.
With more viewing options and so many new platforms, audiences have splintered. The traditional networks draw a fraction of the audiences they once did, and sports viewership is not immune to the change.
Throw in a rancorous, money-driven civil war within what was already a niche sport and it’s a recipe for concern. Like a team off to a slow start, the PGA Tour has been battling headwinds so far this year, some of its own making, some not.
The Masters is one of those rare events that transcends its sport. It may need to do that now more than ever.
E-MAIL RON
Top: Television ratings are down; the question is, why?
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