From inclement weather to low audience retention, the PGA Tour has been afflicted by many woes in the 2024 season. The latter was becoming a normal affair when, at the Valero Texas Open, the viewership increased by 22% from 2023. But not as well as one would have thought. With the men’s first major bringing the golf world together, the ratings were assumed to flourish more; instead, things went haywire at the 88th Masters.

Despite Scottie Scheffler picking up his second win at Augusta National, the TV ratings for the major weren’t at all amusing. This takes it back to Rory McIlroy’s previous statements about how the divisiveness in golf has fatigued the fans, turning them away from watching the game altogether. His comments on fans being uninterested in golf are becoming a threatening reality for the game lately.

The 2024 Masters’ TV rating has dropped exponentially from last year

Josh Carpenter from Sports Business Journal posted an intriguing statistic about the 2024 Masters as it concluded. The tweet shared described how the ratings have dropped for the men’s first major. Interestingly, for the final round of Scottie Scheffler, only 9.589 million people turned in to watch it on CBS. This was a drop from last year’s 12.09 million viewers.

Surprisingly, despite Scheffler’s four short wins over Ludvig Aberg, which was the “second-largest deficit of the season,”  the 88th Masters still procured the worst TV rating in the last five years, the first two being 2020 (Dustin Johnson, 5.64 million) and 2021 (Hideki Matsuyama, 9.450 million). Before the first major commenced, Rory McIlroy had commented on the lowering PGA Tour event’s ratings. At that time, McIlroy said, “If you look at the TV ratings of the PGA Tour this year, they’re down 20% across the board.”

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However, he had given the split in the golf world as the probable reason for the low ratings. World No. 2 suggested that maybe people weren’t tuning in because of that. He explained, “It will be really interesting to see how the major championship numbers fare compared to the other bigger events because 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. 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 if they don’t even want to tune in to the four major championships.”

To a certain extent, what McIlroy said proved to be right. Fans weren’t as intrigued by watching golf as they were last year. Slowly, they seem to have been losing interest. And this concern has been vocalized by many on the PGA Tour too.

Collin Morikawa and Peter Malnati talk about the lack of audience interest in golf

The TV ratings have been a concern for the PGA Tour as of late. At the 50th PLAYERS and the Arnold Palmer Championship, the ratings dropped by 17% and 30%, respectively. Moreover, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, as the final round was suspended due to inclement weather, the golf fan tuned into LIV Golf Mayakoba, dishing the PGA Tour out.

The constant decrease in the Jay Monahan-led Tour’s events is surely a grave concern, and players like Collin Morikawa and Peter Malnati have found what might be causing it. The 2024 Valspar Championship winner attributed the lack of audience watching golf to the constant talk of money.

Malnati said, “People are just sick of the narrative in golf being about, you know, contracts on LIV, purses on the Tour. They want to see the sport; they want to see people who are the best in the world at what they do. Do it at a high level and celebrate that; celebrate the athleticism; celebrate the achievement.” On the other hand, Morikawa had a four-word solution for the decreasing ratings. He wanted the game to become more engaging for the fans. He stated, “You first need to see more golf shots. Like, that’s like—that’s like the No. 1 bullet point.”

With the pros chiming in about what might have gone wrong, the PGA Tour and the golf world have a lot to improve for better TV ratings and the involvement of the public.