The Masters usually answers a few questions in golf, but only a few. The course at Augusta National is so particular that champions have often emerged who, it turns out, had games – or histories at the event – that were perfectly suited for the April weekend but didn’t foretell much about their seasons to come.
It’s a little odd, then, to hear that the year’s first major is being used this week as a temperature-taker on the entire future of golf on TV. But that’s where we are here in 2024.
The Masters arrives this year at a sort of early confluence of issues. Among other things, the tournament goes off Thursday amid a golf ratings slump, with early-season viewership down about 20 percent across the board.
There are explanations for that, including lousy weather that hit several tournaments and forced the cancellation of the final round at Pebble Beach altogether. It hasn’t helped that several PGA events have lacked a little star power in their final rounds.
But the bigger picture is that the current state of golf is weird. And the Masters may tell us just how severely that weirdness is affecting the bottom line.
The PGA’s ongoing fight with the Saudi-backed LIV Golf – and it’s still a fight, even though the two sides announced 10 months ago that they’d work on combining forces – sure feels like it has begun to exhaust fans of the sport. Again, it’s so early in the season that there’s ample time for ratings to kick up. But those close to the Tour understand that all is not well.
“Ratings are down,” PGA Tour vice president Laura Neal told reporters recently. “Can we link that directly to the conflict and fans being fatigued and annoyed or bored, or whatever you might say? Simple answer is, yes-ish. But there’s more to it.”
The Masters is a great litmus test for that theory. It produces the highest golf viewership numbers every year; the 2023 tournament averaged more than 12 million viewers and peaked at more than 15 million, making it the most-watched golf event on CBS in five years.
As a major, the Masters also incorporates players from LIV’s rosters into its field. Adding guys like Jon Rahm, Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau automatically enhances the quality of the pairings and – in theory – makes the weekend that much more watchable.
But that assumes that the fan annoyance Neal referenced can be remedied simply by throwing most of the sport’s stars back in the same field for a few days. Or is golf headed toward a much more dramatic cliff?
Rory McIlroy, who spent much of the past year working behind the scenes on the PGA-LIV rift, is concerned about the latter. Noting the diminished ratings even for the PGA Tour’s hand-crafted “signature” events, McIlroy last month acknowledged that the ugly splintering of the sport’s talent has proved toxic to the public.
“I think fans are getting fatigued of it, and I think the more and more we go down this route, the more people are just going to tune in four times a year (for the majors), which is no good for anyone – no good for golf,” McIlroy said. “That just can’t happen, so we need to figure it out.”
It all brings us back to Augusta. If the Masters pulls its usual viewership numbers, which ratings experts say would fall in the 10.5 million to 13.5 million range, then the early season TV slump might be more easily dismissed as one of those things that happens from time to time.
If those numbers come in at 10 million or below, then a trend of fan disaffection is likely emerging.
ESPN has the first two rounds beginning Thursday, with CBS carrying the weekend. The Masters is also a streamer’s delight, with coverage on ESPN+, Paramount+, Masters.com, the Masters app and the CBS Sports app.
So where’s it all headed? Well, as of this writing, Tiger Woods is expected in the field, which has traditionally been good for a ratings bump.
In a way, though, that’s exactly the problem. If golf in 2024 is relying on Tiger to put some wind under its wings, everybody’s in trouble – on both sides of golf’s intramural fight.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
