The Masters is the first major of the season and it may be the most-celebrated tournament in all of golf. But when it came to this year's final round, well, almost no one watched.
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For the record, Scottie Scheffler won for the second time in three years. That part you already know. Scheffler cruised to a four-shot victory.
But as relayed by Sports TV Ratings, the final round on CBS "averaged 9.589m, down 20% from last year's final round that averaged 12.058m."
Woah. A 20 percent drop in viewership is pretty dramatic in the world of television. And to think there's really no explanation. At least, we can't come up with one.
"CBS' final round broadcast in 2022 averaged 10.17 million viewers, meaning that roughly 580,000 more people tuned in to watch Scheffler win his first green jacket two years ago compared to how many folks watched him win his second in 2024," wrote Mark Harris of Outkick.
"The knee-jerk reaction to seeing the broadcast figures over the last three final rounds of The Masters is that Scheffler simply doesn't move the needle, which is fair, especially when looking at the situation through the lens of the thousands of casual fans who make The Masters the only golf tournament they watch in a calendar year."
Also, last year's Masters final round fell on Easter Sunday — and sports programming tends to do better when everyone has a reason to stay inside, turn on the TV and just chill.
As for this year ... well, television ratings for the networks are down as a whole, unless you count the NFL, which is a broadcasting beast that swallows everything in its path. Streaming services and unlimited options certainly play a role in all that. The slow death of cable certainly does, as well.
"Professional golf and its niche audience, even when discussing The Masters, isn't prone to the wave of sports broadcast ratings taking a hit while people also continue to cord-cut," Harris wrote.
