Olympic golf gets higher ratings than all but Masters
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Golf has joined the ranks of sports that have received a generous boost in viewers during the Olympic games.
In the past, sports like basketball, hockey and tennis have all received ratings spikes during the Games, often garnering multiple times the amount of normal viewers for a non-Olympic event in the same sport.
The Rio Olympics marked the first time in 112 years that golf was included in the Olympics, and despite the initial excitement about the game’s return, the absence of many of the world’s best players left most people with little to be excited about as the games kicked off.
But despite the world’s top four-ranked players choosing not to participate – over Zika concerns, family issues, environmental repercussions etc. – the Olympics first golf tournament in over a century was anything but a bust.
Great Britain’s Justin Rose, the 11th-ranked player in the world, won the gold medal as Sweden’s Henrik Stenson and American Matt Kuchar took silver and bronze respectively.
What almost nobody could’ve expected was the huge turnout the tournament got in terms of final round coverage. During the 90-minute window in which there was coverage of the final round on both the Golf Channel and NBC, the Olympic golf tournament received a Nielsen rating of 5.6 and had 8.8 million viewers.
That may not sound like a lot; that is until you compare it with the major tournaments on the PGA tour in 2016. The NBC simulcast was the highest rated 90-minute segment of any final round of a major tournament this year except for the Masters.
According to Sports Media Watch, the Golf Channel also has its best audience for the early Sunday window since the final round of the 2012 Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which featured Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in the final pairing.
This isn’t the first time the Olympics have provided a substantial viewing boost to sports that otherwise don’t have a huge TV viewership.
During the 2010 Olympics, 27.6 million people tuned in to watch Canada taking on the U.S. in the men’s hockey final, more than double the viewership of the most-watched NHL game in history.
In London 2012, the two highest-rated and most-watched tennis matches of the last 14 years took place a day apart when Serena Williams faced Maria Sharapova in the final to the tune of 7.9 million viewers and Andy Murray played Roger Federer the next day with 8.2 million viewers watching.
While the increase in viewership isn’t as profound as it has been for other sports, the high ratings showed that the Rio Olympics golf tournament was an overwhelming success.
The good news for the sport – which has lately struggled to keep fans interested without a huge star like Tiger Woods – is that it doesn’t need the world’s best and brightest to attract the attention of casual viewers.
