Respectable Northern Trust, Women's Open Ratings On Busy Sports Weekend

With a rain-delayed, Dustin Johnson 11-stroke runaway and loads of competition, CBS should not have drawn any audience for the 2020 Northern Trust Open. Instead, Sunday’s respectable 1.52 and 2.279 million average viewership is miraculous given competition with the NBA and NHL playoffs, the Indy 500, NASCAR and regional MLB action.

As always, the full listing and context can be found at ShowBuzzDaily.

A few other observations:

—The AIG Women’s British drew poor numbers on Golf Channel, particularly given the recent spike in morning golf viewing. The miniscule 245,000 average for the Sunday morning final round makes the one-hour handoff numbers on NBC (.64/886,000) that much more impressive.

—One hour shows on NBC gave the women network exposure and a tighter broadcast window that led to the decent .62/897,000 average.

**CBS offered this ratings summation of their season and 11-week restart run:

CBS Sports’ coverage of the 2020 PGA TOUR season scored big with viewers, as the network delivered its best viewership average and highest-rated PGA TOUR season since 2015.

Overall, CBS Sports’ coverage of the PGA TOUR season was up +17% in viewership and +21% in national household rating/share vs. last year, averaging 2.495 million viewers and a 1.7/5 rating/share for the 14 events, respectively.   

 Since the return to live golf in June, which began at the Charles Schwab Challenge and concluded with THE NORTHERN TRUST, CBS Sports’ PGA TOUR viewership was up +22% vs. the comparable events last year, averaging 2.381 million viewers. The national household rating/share was up +23%, scoring a 1.6/5 rating/share.