The year’s last major tournament in golf saw increased viewership at least for the first two rounds. TNT says 1st round coverage on Thursday. was up 40% in viewership and up 28% in ratings. Comparing it to the year before, the PGA Championship received an average audience of 1.4 million viewers on Thursday up from 1.0 million in 2014 and the rating was 1.0 over 2014’s 0.8.
Friday which had an earlier sign off from the day before due to inclement weather, had even better viewership than Thursday, 2.0 million viewers which was up 25% from 2014’s 1.6 million. And the rating for Friday was 1.4, 17% better than the 2014 tournament which averaged 1.2. In addition, the viewership peaked at 2.4 million between 5:45 and 6 p.m. ET.
TNT averaged 1.7 million viewers and a 1.2 rating for the first two rounds.
Online, PGA.com is seeing increases as well. The website had 1.6 million live video streams and 2.7 million unique visitors across various platforms.
So TNT is pleased over its viewership over the first half of the PGA Championship. Having glamor names such as Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson in the midst of its coverage certainly helped.
As CBS has taken over for the bulk of the weekend, it has some familiar names going for the lead going into today’s final round with Spieth just two shots from the lead plus Jason Day and Justin Rose in the hunt, it gives the Tiffany Network some hope that it can ride the wave that TNT built.
The PGA Championship is usually one of the top-rated golf tournaments of the year after the Masters which CBS also airs, so if there’s some drama today, there’s a chance that this year’s ratings could do well.
It all comes down to the final round.
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