Jon Rahm, LIV conflict drive Masters TV ratings way up

The drama between Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka at The Masters was reflected in audience numbers.

CBS announced Tuesday that Sunday’s final round from Augusta had an average minute audience of 12.058 million viewers, the highest total not just for The Masters but for any golf broadcast since 2018, and up 19% compared to last year.

Rahm and Koepka, who had won five combined majors heading into last week, were dueling it out in a competition that did not have a clear winner until Rahm pulled away in the last several holes.

It bears mentioning that if The Masters had forbade LIV Golf players from playing — a scenario many observers felt was plausible until just a few months ago — Rahm would have had a comfortable lead over the field and a portion of the TV audience presumably would not have felt compelled to stick around.

Some people reading this might wonder how Rahm versus Koepka — one of the top player on the LIV tour — was able to eclipse the 2019 viewership numbers when Tiger Woods last won The Masters.

That year, The Masters had to move a few hours earlier due to the threat of inclement weather, and the final round averaged 10.81 million viewers.

Still, that classic Tiger Woods round peaked at over 18 million viewers, compared to a high of more than 15 million viewers for this year’s final round.

In 2020, Nielsen began counting out-of-home audience in its immediate numbers, which means that this year’s viewers who were watching at the homes of friends or family, as well as those in restaurants, gyms, hotels and other locations were counted whereas they would not have been in 2019.

Nonetheless, it was an apples-to-apples comparison to last year, and the tight race made for a marked improvement in audience metrics from 2021, when Hideki Matsuyama edged out Will Zalatoris.