2021 Tour Championship Ratings Down A Tick And Generally Stink For a $46 Million Investment

I realize that a variety of metrics are used to justify a $46 million payout and the many millions FedEx pays to sponsor the season-long chase. Still, when you look at the 2021 Tour Championship ratings and the zilch-buzz factor in the golf community last weekend, they’ve got to handle a lot of packages to justify the tab.

Amazingly the payout will go up next year. At least the ratings stand a chance of inching up a shade when they aren’t going against Alabama football, as they did this year and prompting Saturday’s meager 1.14/1.85 million viewers.

According to Showbuzzdaily.com, the 2021 final round drew a 2.30/3.97 million for part of the telecast which, for the second year in a year, was broken up in the ratings listing. Presumably the average audience size for the 1:30-6 pm window would drop below a 2 if they tallied the numbers in more traditional fashion. And I’m going to guess that a rating below 2 causes the purple and orange phone to ring in Jay Monahan’s office.

Sunday’s first ninety minutes drew a 1.36 with only U.S. Open tennis and the Solheim Cup as early sports viewing competition.

The 2020 Tour Championship finished on Labor Day Monday and drew a 2.42/4.00 million. That telecast’s ratings were also broken up into two numbers to goose the average. The early window drew a 1.51.

As for the far more satisfying Solheim Cup, Saturday’s NBC window drew a .41 and Sunday’s garnered a .59, with an average viewership of 878,000 on NBC. The four-hour Saturday afternoon coverage on Golf Channel drew a .28 and a 432,000 average viewers.

Monday’s singles spread out over a six-hour window on Golf Channel averaged 588,000 viewers.

**Paulsen at Sports Media Watch broke down both the Tour Championship and Solheim Cup ratings and noted this about the PGA Tour’s numbers:

Dating back to the start of July, 16 of 18 PGA Tour windows on broadcast television declined from the last comparable year.