The thing about golf’s TV turmoil

For those uninitiated in pro golf’s latest strife, it would be sensible to assume some kind of correlation between the burgeoning bank accounts of golfers and the rise in people watching them hit golf shots. Supply and demand, right?

Not quite.

In these absurd times, the opposite has been true. The television is off and the alarm bells are ringing.

The raw data surrounding golf’s decline in TV audience is certainly stark. In 2024, the PGA Tour’s average weekend viewership on the box dropped by 15%. Rory McIlroy described that plunge as ‘jarring.’ Critically, the majors weren’t immune either. Viewership for Scottie Scheffler’s second Masters win was down 20% on CBS from the previous year. The Open then suffered its worst ratings in over a decade. While players continue to cash in on inflated purses, the telly slide has become impossible for the powerbrokers to ignore.

The bad news for the solution-orientated bigwigs, though, is that the reasons are both nuanced and multi-faceted.

The first obvious issue is the headache-inducing civil war between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, which, at the time of writing, still drags on. A split talent pool caused by Saudi Arabia’s investment in the game has diluted the sport to the point where the biggest stars meet only four times a season. When has that ever proven a good idea?

PGA Tour leaderboards no doubt miss the star quality of Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, but the fledgling LIV tour hasn’t proved an attractive enough league either. The incessant talk of money and the exposure of greed among many former favourites has left fans feeling disaffected, too.

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Despite making efforts to portray the contrary, golfers are now less relatable than they have ever been. Even for self-confessed golf nuts, who may otherwise feel compelled to tune into coverage of, say, the Valspar Championship, fatigue has set in. The one thing worse than antipathy, of course, is apathy. No wonder the more casual among us are searching for the ‘off’ button.

Then there’s the ugly issue of slow play. The excellent Dottie Pepper called out the worsening problem after trudging nine holes in three hours during this year’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

“We’re starting to need a new word to talk about this pace of play issue and its respect for your fellow competitors, for the fans, for broadcasting,” she moaned live on CBS. “It’s just got to get better.” You know breaking point has been reached when broadcast partners serving to protect and promote their product can no longer hide their own disdain.

How can you attract new fans (or win back disillusioned ones) when rounds are taking up half the viewers’ day? Which brings us to arguably the most pertinent point of all.

The uncomfortable truth is that the societal shift in recent years has not been conducive at all to tournament golf on TV. Consumer habits have changed beyond measure and attention spans are at an all-time low. Impatient sports fans are turning to non-linear viewing platforms to catch the action in an instant.

Golf viewers in the US, meanwhile, are met with 18 minutes of adverts an hour during TV coverage. To a lesser extent, the excellent Sky Sports coverage suffers from the same problem. Before LIV struck a surprise deal with ITV this year, virtually all live golf in the UK was behind a paywall, too. In a world of choice, convenience is key and television has long struggled to keep up with the streaming world. YouTube golf content has been on the rise, too, with a growing younger market seeking immediate gratification with more personality and fun on the course.

McIlroy and Tiger Woods have tapped in to this with TGL, the made-for-TV simulator league which launched in January. The venture garnered early intrigue and seems to fit a hole during a quieter period in the calendar from January to March. The irony was not lost on McIlroy’s detractors shortly after the launch, though, when he admitted: “I can see why the golf consumer might get a little fatigued with everything that’s available to them.” Even so, this is a wildly different product that McIlroy and Woods hope is additive and will invigorate a new audience.

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Yet regardless of whether TGL endures, it is increasingly clear that golf should not measure its success by TV viewership anymore. More people are playing golf than ever before, and fewer people are switching on the box. That’s just the reality. Just because television ratings are in decline, it doesn’t mean golf is.

And while paralysis often seems to trump progress in the ancient game, there are some things that can be done to at least manage the TV decline in a post-Tiger world. Tours properly addressing slow play and broadcasters showing more shots during live coverage would surely be a start.

The Masters, meanwhile, has set the standard for what is possible with a ‘must have’ app that allows users to watch their favourite players in real time. It goes without saying that the tours combining their best players together on the most watchable courses would help, too. It was hardly a surprise the PGA Tour enjoyed rare ratings boosts when McIlroy won at Pebble Beach and Jordan Spieth was in weekend contention at the Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale two weeks later.

Those assuming, however, that an agreement to unify the game’s warring factions could immediately energise a tired audience and cause TV viewership to thrive again are grossly mistaken. For many, the show is already over.

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This interview first appeared in issue 220 of bunkered (March 2025). For more like this, why not take out a subscription? International subscriptions also available?

Ben Parsons is the Senior Writer at bunkered and is the man to come to for all of the latest news, across both the professional and amateur games. Formerly of The Mirror and Press Association, he is a member at Halifax Golf Club and is a long-suffering fan of both Manchester United and the Wales rugby team.