NBC Announces Incredible PNC Championship Viewing Figures

Despite 11 consecutive birdies en route to a final round 57, Tiger and Charlie Woods fell just short at the PNC Championship, ultimately won by the also father and son duo of John Daly and John Daly II. The tournament marked Tiger’s first since last year’s PNC Championship and also the first since his near career-ending injury in February.

After the dust settled on what was a remarkable tournament in so many ways, American television broadcasters, NBC, announced the viewing figures. First released by Kyle Porter, writer for CBS, the tournament averaged 2.3 million viewers throughout the week. This year’s Open Championship averaged 2.1 million viewers.  

On face value, it is astounding that the PNC Championship can outperform a Major Championship in viewership but that's not the suggestion or conclusion. For context, British and European based fans had the luxury of watching the drama unfold during prime time television whereas United States based audiences would have had to tune in before dawn. NBC figures also show an average of 4.2 million watched the final round of the Open, which gives more of an indication as to the Championship's true popularity. 

Take this statistic and comparison away, the PNC Championship proved to be an enormous viewing success. Television audiences peaked at 3.2 million viewers as Team Woods and Team Daly battled it out on the final day and a record 24 million minutes of coverage were streamed across all platforms; nearly 2.5 times the prior record of 10 million minutes when Tiger and Charlie made their debut in 2020. PNC Championship content accounted for 27 of the 50 most viewed clips on NBCSports.com last week.

With an average of 2.3 million viewers, it was the most watched PNC Championship since Raymond and Robert Floyd defeated Johnny Millner, and son Scott Miller, in 2000. It was also a 53% increase from last year’s 1.5 million viewers.

We’ve all heard the phrase – “Tiger is the needle” – and this is another example of that but it also shows there is an appetite for golf outside of 72 hole stroke play events. Who knew?