The Solheim Cup wrapped up last Sunday, with Nelly Korda and Team USA once again returning home empty-handed from European soil. And the losses continued at home, too. Just days later, Sports Business Journal’s Josh Carpenter revealed the viewership figures for the biennial women’s team event on Golf Channel. Saturday’s coverage drew 179,000 viewers, while Sunday’s broadcast attracted 170,000. Those numbers prompted Fried Egg Golf’s Brendan Porath to label the figures “not a good number.” 

“Those numbers are lower than they should be for what was a good event,” he added during the podcast. “Was a good event on paper, was a good event like each day setting up for it, with the close scoreboard.”

He also pointed out that people often blame the coverage hours for low viewership, but felt that there’s an even bigger problem at play. That’s when Kevin Van Valkenburg chimed in, highlighting two contributing factors that may have resulted in the low viewership. 

“I think that football is such a behemoth that it is really hard to get… I mean, I would bet that a lot of those people who would otherwise watch the Solheim Cup… are watching fantasy shows to think about setting their lineups, or are maybe locked in on college football the night before,” Valkenburg said. “So, [they are] not going to get up at 5 in the morning to watch the singles start…”

He also highlighted that LPGA’s biggest star, Nelly Korda, is “not super comfortable” with constantly being the person responsible for “selling the sport.” Valkenburg said that is “totally within her rights,” but he warned the LPGA that the low viewership could become a serious issue for attracting rights holders in the future. Meanwhile, Andy Johnson had an even more alarming view of the LPGA’s future. 

“I think this is a fire alarm,” Johnson said. “Since COVID, there’s never been so much money and [a real] attempt to make women’s golf happen… I want women’s sports… to be as popular and as fruitful and as televised and as produced to the same level as men’s golf. But at a certain point, there has to be a viewership response to accommodate everything that everybody’s trying to do to support the women’s game.”

He went as far as to claim that women who play golf don’t watch women’s golf. So, what could be the solution? Porath appeared to have a roadmap. 

He felt bringing in someone from outside golf could provide a fresh perspective. Porath said the organization may need to be “more aggressive” rather than continuing to operate within the traditional golf ecosystem, where stakeholders “all hold hands and work together.” 

He pointed to PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who comes from outside the golf world, as an example and questioned whether the LPGA should consider a similarly “forward-thinking” approach. Yet this comes after Nelly Korda’s 2026 U.S. Women’s Open triumph coincided with a significant surge in television viewership. The final round of the event averaged 1.3 million viewers, up 78% from the previous year. 

Meanwhile, the audience peaked at 2.2 million during the closing stages of Korda’s victory. Saturday’s third round also averaged 1 million viewers, a 76% year-over-year increase. Similarly, the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship delivered a major television audience boost in 2026, despite a weather delay that disrupted NBC’s planned coverage. Haeran Ryu’s victory at Hazeltine National averaged 1.4 million viewers in the final round across NBC and Peacock. 

This made it the most-watched final round of the event since 2005, with an audience roughly three times last year’s of 428,000. This suggests that women’s golf attracts an audience, raising the question of whether the specific event itself or its location in Europe, where Team USA has historically struggled, caused the lower Solheim Cup numbers.