A phenomenal final round by NBA icon and two-time MVP Steph Curry helped lead ample coverage for NBC Sports this weekend. The network touted that Curry‘s highlight-reel Sunday at the American Century Championship delivered the biggest audience for the event in almost two decades.
“Sunday’s Final Round coverage on NBC (2:30-6:08 p.m. ET) averaged 1.4 million viewers to rank as the event’s most-watched Final Round since 2004,” the network said in a release. In 2004, 1.6 million viewers watched the American Century Championship’s Final Round coverage.
According to the release, the event peaked at over 2.2 million viewers from 5:45-6 p.m. Eastern. That was when Curry defeated Mardy Fish with a magnificent eagle on the 18th hole. Steph won the event, becoming the fifth active athlete to win the event but the first since 2000. At the start of the millennium, Al Del Greco, a Tennessee Titans placekicker, picked up the win.
NBC also touted a strong audience for the entire event, which partied on from Friday through Sunday. According to the release, the event drew an average of 978,000 viewers on NBC and the Golf Channel. That makes for the most-watched edition of the event since the year 2009.
It’s a pretty substantial mark for NBC for a celebrity golf tournament. It’s not The Open or any major title event. However, in the summertime, for many people, sports are sports. So there will always be an audience. Combine that starvation with one of the biggest NBA stars in the United States in Steph Curry, and you win the ratings.
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022