The penultimate week of the inaugural TGL regular season has come to a close, and the latest TV ratings are in! However, they might not be what some hoped for. Monday’s doubleheader on ESPN2 brought in 263,000 viewers for the first match and 297,000 for the second, as reported by Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal. While these numbers show improvement, they still represent the lowest ratings of the season for TGL. In the first match, Los Angeles Golf Club clinched a playoff spot with a 5-4 win over New York Golf Club.

Despite the disappointing ratings, the upcoming final week of the regular season offers a glimmer of optimism for a strong finish. The playoffs are fast approaching, and the semifinal matches on March 17 and 18 will be crucial. But the bigger question looms: with viewership numbers falling short, what’s next for Tiger Woods’s TGL? Golf Insider reveals what’s truly behind the league’s direction and the plans that could change its future trajectory.

Jeff Neubarth was recently invited to the Golf Channel Podcast to do a rundown analysis of the Inaugural season for TGL. When asked about the gadgets they use, he said, “It’s really funny because I started an Apple note probably in October called ‘Season 2 Wishlist’, and I am so deep into that note right now that I probably needed the entire offseason just to read it and re-prioritize it. There are so many things that are opportunities for us to do to get better that we’re going to do.” TGL is using the Tiger Woods-endorsed Full Swing KIT golf launch monitors to track the ball flight and create the golf simulator portion of the programming.

And to keep up with it, the league needs more and more technology partners. “There are so many technology partners that we kind of talked with and said, ‘Hey, these are some thoughts and ideas, and we’d love you to come to check out TGL and see it.’ They were like, ‘Yeah, yeah, we want to wait and see it first.’ Now that they’ve seen it, every day goes by with a call, text, or email from someone in some form of technology who has a camera that could plus up this, or has a technology that could plus up that, or a graphic operation that could make this unique and different, or player tracking, etc,” added the Vice President of Media Production, TMRW Sports. He is optimistic that a lot of things will be better for the next season, but for him, documenting every event is his priority right now.  

Min Woo Lee put on an outstanding performance in the 12th TGL match between The Bay Golf Club and Jupiter Links Golf Club on Tuesday. The 26-year-old made history as his team, The Bay, dominated Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Lee set two unique records, becoming the first player in TGL history to hole two shots from off the green. His remarkable feat came when he chipped in from just under 25 feet on the sixth hole, further cementing his place in TGL history. This turns out to be a great storyline. Taking to this, he also added, “Storyline advancement is really what’s next for me for the next couple of weeks.”

And well, that was not all for the revelations. Jeff Neubarth also shared some of the perspectives that they had in mind before beginning the league. 

TGL’s main target: Having a younger audience 

It is not new that golf is a sport with middle-aged viewers. However, when Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy created TGL, the idea was to attract a younger audience. This was the main reason to begin the Clock Watch and restrict the matches to not more than 2 hours. While that has not always been possible, at least they have tried. Talking about this strategy, Jeff Neubarth said, “That’s kind of what I look at and that’s kind of what I focus on, and that’s something I think in a small way that I can control with the decisions that we make. Having these access to the microphones, having the show move so fast, it’s so frenetic.”

The TGL is currently averaging 869,000 viewers after its first three matches, a 50% increase compared to the same time slots in 2024 when college basketball on ESPN was shown. The match between Atlanta Drive and New York Golf Club on January 24 night attracted 682,000 viewers, marking its lowest viewership so far, but still surpassing the 456,000 viewers for a Texas-Oklahoma men’s basketball game during the same window last year. Notably, the TGL is drawing a younger audience, with a median viewer age of 51, which is considerably younger than the PGA Tour and LIV Golf, both averaging a median age of 63. He also added how they have been keeping track of what they are broadcasting online so that the younger audience is attracted to watching the match, making it exciting. He added how excited he was initially this year.

“Up until now, we’ve been able to accomplish that, and that’s something I think is good for this game. If we can get folks excited about Min Woo Lee on a Tuesday night, well, good news—Min Woo is playing this week on television, and you’re going to be able to watch more of him. If you know who that is and you’ve seen him in a different way than you’ve maybe been able to see him before, maybe that younger group will come and watch and take the opportunity to then become a bigger fan,” he said.

What do you think about TGL’s strategy? Let us know in the comments section below!