The PGA Tour is struggling. For viewership. If the Tour’s top golfer, Rory McIlroy, is to be believed, the viewership this year has been down by almost 20%. That is a lot. Not at just one event, but almost every second event has witnessed lower numbers. Talk about Scottie Scheffler‘s THE PLAYERS win where only 3.53 million fans tuned in, down from 4.14 million in 2023, or his Arnold Palmer Invitational victory, which saw a 30% freefall from last year’s Hideki Matsuyama’s win with only 2.29 viewers watching the Sunday round.

Hence, one can conclude that the Jay Monahan-led Tour has witnessed a massive drop in viewership and overall ratings! Maybe for all the right reasons or wrong, but this is what the scene has been. Even with the world’s best golfers on the PGA Tour, fans have not been eager to tune in. Why? Maybe because they have not been getting to see all the world-class golfers together on the greens.

But the Masters final round also had 20% less viewership on CBS, and needless to say, something similar was expected for the PGA Championship as well! Interestingly, at the 106th PGA Championship, the wheels have turned! What Monahan couldn’t do, the PGA Championship has successfully achieved.

The PGA Championship witnessed better ratings than 2023

Last year, when the golfers from the PGA Tour and LIV Golf were enjoined at Oak Hills on Thursday, a total of 1.069 million fans tuned in to watch it. Defying the odds, the second major attracted 4% more audience than last year. Sports Business Journal‘s Josh Carpenter posted the round stats of the PGA Championship and shared how it had 1.118 million, 48,000 more than the 2023 PGA Championship.

Additionally, audience retention peaked between 6:15 and 6:30 p.m., as 1.4 million people were watching at that time. Even though there was an increase in overall viewership from 2023, the first round couldn’t surpass that of 2022, when Tiger Woods‘s round was broadcast.

In 2022, Woods’s round one had 1.4 million viewers; it was set in the Central time zone and was the highest-rated round one of the PGA Championship since 2002. So, with the 15-time major winner’s round ending just when the telecast started and the time zone shifting to the Eastern zone, it affected the rating too. It seems that people would’ve tuned in more to watch Woods, and the ratings would’ve been better than 4%.

Additionally, Scheffler’s shocking arrest on Friday morning could garner more viewership for the PGA Championship in the upcoming rounds as fans could be intrigued about his post-jail time, and how it would have impacted his game. When the trend in the golf world has been that people are losing interest in watching golf for whatever reasons, this 4% increase is one of the small wins.

While the 27-year-old may become a beacon of hope for the PGA Championship to draw more fans, the PGA Tour also had a huge turnaround because of the Northern Irishman in recent times, which put Jay Monahan’s viewership woes temporarily at bay.

Rory McIlroy’s win at Quail Hollow interested 1 million more fans

Before the PGA Championship, the PGA Tour’s top talent was gathered at Quail Hollow, a venue that will host the 2025 PGA Championship. While Scottie Scheffler missed the event as he was on a small hiatus for his baby boy’s birth, Rory McIlroy eyed the fourth Wells Fargo Championship win, and the 35-year-old successfully did that! McIlroy won the Wells Fargo Championship by one stroke over Xander Schauffele.

The Sunday round of the elevated event drew in 34% more fans than Wyndham Clark’s victory in 2023. Seeing McIlroy win back-to-back after having claimed the Zurich Classic just a week before, a total of 3.830 million fans watched on CBS. Last year, only 2.073 million tuned in. Looking at the temporarily improved ratings of the events, the tour can assure itself that it is not all over yet.

It will be interesting to see what the final viewership count of the ongoing Valhalla showdown will be or what the ratings of the next PGA Tour event (the Charles Schwab Challenge) will be. Will it surpass last year’s viewership or follow the same pattern as other PGA Tour events?