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Rory McIlroy’s history-making victory in The Masters delivered a massive boost for golf’s struggling television ratings.

Sunday’s exhilarating final round at Augusta National was the most-watched golf telecast on any US network in the last seven years, averaging 12.707 million viewers – a 33% increase on the final round in 2024.

CBS Sports, which broadcast Sunday’s play, added that coverage peaked with 19.543 million viewers between 7pm and 7.15pm ET.

That’s only around 700,000 less than the 20.2 million average viewership for Tiger Woods’ victory in 2019.

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Sunday was also the most-watched Masters final round since 2018, when McIlroy also entered the final round with a chance of victory, only for Patrick Reed to take the green jacket instead.

Led by The Masters, Paramount+ on Sunday registered its largest non-NFL sports day ever. It was also the most-streamed golf event ever for Paramount+, with triple-digit, year-on-year viewership growth.

The numbers are a timely shot-in-the-arm for the sport, which has suffered from broadly disappointing TV ratings in the US in recent times, and follows a strong performance at last month’s PLAYERS Championship, also won by McIlroy.

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The PGA Tour’s flagship event at TPC Sawgrass drew 3.6 million viewers on NBC during its final round, with a peak audience of 6.2 million at 7pm.

That was up from six million last year, while final round ratings for the last three years stood at 3.5 million (Scheffler, 2024), 4.1 million (Scheffler, 2023) and 2.9 million (Smith, 2022).