Rory McIlroy dishes cold truth on “jarring” PGA Tour ratings in the tank

The PGA Tour has not had a good season ratings-wise.

This year’s Players Championship, perhaps the best professional golf tournament since the 2022 U.S. Open, saw Scottie Scheffler come from behind and win the PGA Tour’s marquee event. His masterful 8-under 64 on Sunday led him to finish one stroke ahead of Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman. Yet, that drew 3.5 million viewers, down from 4.1 million a season ago, which also saw Scheffler prevail.

The following week, the Valspar Championship saw a similar trend. Only 1.89 million tuned into Peter Malnati’s victory, down from 2.59 million the year before, when Taylor Moore fended off Jordan Spieth.

So that leads us to ask, why?

Rory McIlroy seems to have an idea.

“If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20 percent across the board. That’s a fifth. That’s big… 20 percent’s a pretty jarring number.” McIlroy said.

Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

“I would say the numbers on LIV aren’t great either in terms of the people tuning in. I just think with the fighting and everything that’s gone on over the past couple of years, people are just getting really fatigued from it. It’s turning people off men’s professional golf, and that’s not a good thing for anyone.”

The PGA Tour-LIV Golf divide has turned many golf fans away while creating plenty of infighting among players, fans, and pundits alike. LIV has taken many of the tour’s top talent away, most notably Jon Rahm, the defending Masters champion, who jettisoned to the Saudi-backed circuit for more than $400 million in December.

As such, McIlroy, among others, has called for a unified, global tour. Phil Mickelson recently agreed with this concept, too.

But it will take some time for all sides to come together.

Thus, in the interim, McIlroy noted that television ratings for this year’s major championships will be an accurate barometer for the state of the professional game.

“It’s going to be really interesting to see how the four major championships do, or even the three because put Augusta aside, I think that sort of lives in its own world,” McIlroy said.

“It will be really interesting to see how the major championship numbers fare compared to the other bigger events because there’s an argument to be made if the numbers are better and you’ve got all the best players in the world playing, then there’s an argument to say OK, we need to get this thing back together.

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“But on the flip side, if the numbers aren’t as good, it’s an argument to still say we need to put everyone back together because people are losing interest in the game even if they don’t want to tune in to the four major championships. Things need a correction, and things are unsustainable because I’m close with NBC and the people who really care about these things and the people who tune in to watch golf.”

Only one tournament on the PGA Tour this year has seen a year-to-year increase in ratings. That would be The American Express, which saw Nick Dunlap become the first amateur to win on tour since Mickelson did so in 1991.

It took a historic occurrence for the tour to see gains, a massive problem.

Even Scheffler’s unprecedented title defense at TPC Sawgrass did not produce a ratings increase, something that tour brass in Ponta Vedra Beach should be concerned about.

However, as McIlroy alluded to, if the PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and Open Championship all experience declines in numbers, then the professional game as a whole is struggling to garner attention.

We will not know until late July, but all signs point to the tour—and golf as a whole—shooting themselves in the foot during this debacle. Golf still has time to alleviate itself, but the clock is ticking.

In an era where one’s attention spans are at an all-time low, thanks to social media, smartphones, and other distractions, golf has little time to figure out how to lure people back in. If golf cannot do so, and continue down this path, then the professional game will continue to trend towards a state of peril.

Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.