LPGA's TOC Doubles PGA Tour's Amex Audience In Fruitless Head-To-Head Against NFL

With the two NFL games drawing audiences of 41 and 44 million thereabouts, golf had little chance. There were more people trying to scrape the last bit of guac out of the bowl at any given time than watching golf.

Don’t believe me? Look at the numbers. With a very strong microscope.

For reasons known only to people who draw six and seven figure salaries, the LPGA Tour and PGA Tour continued their bizarre tradition of trying to finish against the NFL’s conference championship games.

The 2021 final rounds of the Diamond Resorts TOC and American Express Championship played out on NBC and Golf Channel respectively. Both were better-than-average finishes, with the LPGA averaging 557,000 viewers to the PGA Tour’s 297,000 according to ShowBuzzDaily.

The LPGA’s season opener drew an almost identical number last year on NBC.

And this, despite a pretty dreadful viewing experience caused by pace of play and a heavy commercial load, as written about by Will Knights at The Fried Egg.

As for the Amex, it also drew similarly pitiful ratings in 2020, landing between Vengeance: Killer Coworkers on HLN and Vet Exotic on National Geographic. The 2021 Amex final round was beaten by the event’s Friday and Saturday rounds along with every college basketball game aired last week but three. And there were some real stinkers on that long list.

The Amex’s Monday rebroadcast also failed to crack the cable top 150 shows, killing the “total audience delivery” case to the AmEx executives wondering how to justify the sponsorship.

Also, no rounds of the Abu Dhabi HSBC won by Tyrell Hatton over Rory McIlroy drew a discernible audience last week. And with five days left in January 2021, Golf Channel’s non-live golf coverage has yet to have a show crack the top 150 cable shows on any given day.

This is all a nice way of saying: week-to-week pro golf has a product crisis on multiple fronts.