Rory McIlroy’s Pebble Beach win sparks TV surge

It turns out Rory McIlroy was right.

At the heart of the Northern Irishman’s solutions to fix golf’s lagging TV ratings was the desire to compete at iconic venues.

“I think really good venues are a big part of the storyline,” McIlroy said.

“Sometimes on the PGA Tour, that isn’t the case because whether you play a run-of-the-mill TPC or whatever it is, it just isn’t that interesting.”

So, surely Pebble Beach and Spyglass – which McIlroy called “two of the best we play all year” – would turn the tide?

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Combined with a stacked leaderboard of Ryder Cup stars and major champions, that was exactly the case.

McIlroy’s triumph at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am was the PGA Tour’s best event of the season in terms of viewership, raking in a final round average of 3.3 million viewers.

Big number here for Rory's win at Pebble Beach. Here are Sunday averages over the last several years:

2022: 3.09 million
2023: 2.27 million
2024: 1.91 million (rain delayed)
2025: 3.3 million https://t.co/MUMhSH2QFd

— James Colgan (@jamescolgan26) February 4, 2025

While there was no NFL action over the weekend, CBS reported that it was the most-watched PGA Tour final round on any network since the Players Championship last March.

Meanwhile, the ratings for the event trumped those of the last three years. The Sunday average was up around 70% on Wyndham Clark’s rain delayed walkover last year.

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To put the figures into more reasonable context, the 2022 final round averaged 3.09 million viewers, and the 2023 final round averaged 2.27 million viewers.

And towards the end of the broadcast, with Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman in the booth, the 2025 contest peaked at almost four million viewers.

According to Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal, Daniel Berger’s win in 2021 had 4.19 million average final round viewers.

The highly popular Waste Management Phoenix Open is up next on the PGA Tour before the Genesis Invitational takes place at Torrey Pines.

John Turnbull A graduate of the University of Stirling, John joined the bunkered team in 2023 as a Content Producer, with a responsibility for covering all breaking news, tour news, grassroots content and much more besides. A keen golfer, he plays the majority of his golf at Falkirk Golf Club. Top of his 'bucket list' is a round of Pebble Beach... ideally in the company of Gareth Bale.