Kapalua Ratings: Going Against NFL A Bad Idea, Finishing Against Golden Globes Worked Better

As Sports Business Daily notes, the NFL’s Saturday Wild Card games were up, with massive peak audiences of 31.4 million for Titans-Patriots and 29.4 million for the Texans-Bills overtime thriller on ESPN.

The NFL saw gains for both of its Wild Card games on Saturday. CBS led the way with 31.4 million viewers for the Titans’ win over the Patriots, which is the best audience for the Saturday primetime Wild Card since Saints-Eagles drew 34.4 million in ’14 on NBC.

Third round play at Kapalua went up against the Patriots game and did not rate among the top 150 cable shows, where a .3 minimum was needed to rank.

The news was better Sunday as NFL games ended earlier, freeing up eyeballs for the 2020 Sentry’s conclusion, won by Justin Thomas in sudden death playoff over Xander Schauffele and Patrick Reed.

Sunday’s live PGA Tour coverage on Golf Channel ranked 79th, with only the Golden Globes as major competition. The Sentry drew a .09 with an average audience size of 634k, 319k were 18-49 year olds. That means the peak audience was significantly higher during the exciting conclusion.

Still, there may also be viewers lost to a pair of NFL games already played and limits to how many hours one can watch television in a day. Not to mention, most Sunday night, Monday coverage centered around the NFL games.

And circling back to Sunday’s reader poll asking about Monday finishes for the entire Hawaii/La Quinta swing, 68% of you voted in favor of such a setup to avoid football. As always, thank you for voting!