An unusually bunched leaderboard helped lift CBS to its best PGA Championship viewership in five years.
CBS averaged 5.76 million viewers for the final round of the PGA Championship on Sunday, a 21% year-over-year increase versus Scottie Scheffler’s runaway win at Quail Hollow in 2025. It was the most-watched final round of the PGA Championship since 2021, when a 50-year-old Phil Mickelson improbably won at Kiawah in front of a television audience of 6.58 million viewers.
Aaron Rai’s back-nine surge this year peaked at 8.02 million viewers, with the final hour of Rai’s round averaging 7.83 million viewers for CBS.
CBS Sports delivered the most-watched final round of the PGA Championship in five years, and coverage peaked with more than 8 million viewers: pic.twitter.com/UaWP8BnmdU
— CBS Sports PR (@CBSSportsGang) May 19, 2026
The tournament, which most of the weekend felt destined for a tight finish, lacked drama in the end, with Rai heating up late to win by three strokes. A closer finish could’ve potentially garnered an even larger audience.
Saturday proved to be historically strong as well, with dozens of players vying for a spot in the final group on Sunday. 3.86 million viewers tuned in for CBS’s third-round coverage, the best Saturday figure for the PGA Championship since 2018.
It is important to note that this is only the second PGA Championship to be measured using Nielsen’s expanded out-of-home viewing sample, and the first to be measured under Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology. Both changes have generally increased viewership of live sports compared to prior years.
Nevertheless, none of the past three PGA Championships eclipsed an average of 5 million viewers during the final round, even though those tournaments were won by Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, and Brooks Koepka, three of the sport’s biggest stars. To surpass that mark for a relatively anonymous golfer like Aaron Rai should bode well for interest in the rest of this year’s major championship slate.
Next up is the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills, with NBC slated for coverage.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.