Ratings Roundup: Tiger Wood's First Masters Win in 14 Years Crushes Morning Golf Record on CBS

Ratings Roundup: Tiger Wood's First Masters Win in 14 Years Crushes Morning Golf Record on CBS By Kristian Hernandez, Assistant Editor

Wednesday, April 17, 2019 - 8:00 am

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Ratings roundup is a rundown of rating news from the past week and is derived from press releases and reports around the industry. In this week's edition, the 2019 Masters breaks a 34-year-old morning record for a golf telecast, the men's and women's March Madness tournament concluded across ESPN and Turner/CBS, the NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs kicked off last Wednesday, NESN grabbed their best Bruins rating of the year as well as the most-watched pregame ceremony since 2005, NBC Sports' coverage of the 2019 NTT IndyCar Series is up, the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix reached its largest U.S. audience on ESPN, and Liga MX pushes ratings success on Univision.

Tiger Woods's Victory Breaks 34-Year-Old Record at The Masters

CBS Sports' final-round coverage of the 2019 Masters, which aired live Sunday morning due to the weather adjusted tee times (9:00 AM-3:00 PM, ET) and its encore presentation of the final-round (3:00-7:00 PM, ET), dominated the day's sports landscape scoring the top two rated sports broadcasts of the day.

Live coverage of the Masters final round delivered a 7.7/21 average household rating/share in the metered markets, the highest-rated morning golf broadcast in 34 years.* Yesterday's final round also is the highest-rated golf broadcast on any network since last year's Masters final round.

The final-round peaked with a 12.1/28 rating/share from 2:15-2:30 PM, ET.

Yesterday's final-round live coverage and encore presentation earned a combined gross household rating/share of 11.1/29 in the metered markets.

The encore presentation of the final round earned a 3.4/8 rating/share, the third-highest rated golf broadcast-to-date on any network this year behind only the live third-round and final-round of the Masters in the metered markets.

Coverage of Saturday's third round was the highest-rated Saturday golf telecast on any network in four years since 2015's Masters third round (6.5/16), earning a ratings increase of 5% from last year's third round (5.7/13) with a 6.0/15 average household metered market rating/share. This year's third-round rating peaked with a 7.0/16 rating/share from 6:00-6:15 PM, ET.

The top five rated markets were Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville (10.8/20), West Palm Beach (10.6/22), Ft Myers (10.3/20), Minneapolis (10.2/26), and Nashville (9.5/17).

As for Friday's second round on ESPN, coverage averaged 3.2 million viewers during the 3:00-7:45 p.m. ET telecast from Augusta National Golf Club. The 3.2 million average, based on Nielsen Fast National data, was ESPN's second-largest audience for the second round since 2013, exceeded only by the 3.9 million that watched last year. The viewership average does not include the rain delay that halted play from 5:03 - 5:34 p.m. on Friday.

Friday's audience was up significantly from 2017 (2.6 million) and 2016 (3.0 million), the last two years that Woods did not compete in the Masters due to injuries. It also was higher than 2015 (3.0 million, with Woods in competition) and 2014 (2.5 million when Woods missed the Masters for the first time in his career).

Also on ESPN, Thursday's opening round attracted nearly 2.5 million viewers according to Nielsen Fast National data. Coverage began at 3 p.m. ET and ESPN averaged 2,482,117 viewers for the 4.5-hour telecast as a star-studded leaderboard contested the iconic venue. The viewership was lower than last year's average of 2,971,287, which was the first time Tiger Woods had competed in the tournament since 2015, but was higher than both 2017 (2,129,214) and 2016 (2,397,624).

Greenville, S.C., led all metered markets with a 4.6 rating for the telecast, followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul at 4.4 and Buffalo at 3.8. Fort Myers-Naples was fourth at 3.6 with Columbus, Ohio, fifth at 3.4. Rounding out the top 10 metered markets were Indianapolis, 3.3; Denver and West Palm Beach, 3.0; Pittsburgh, 2.8; and Cincinnati, 2.7.

On the amateur side, the final round of the inaugural Augusta National Women's Amateur, won by Jennifer Kupcho (Senior, Wake Forest University), is the highest-rated amateur golf telecast - men's or women's - in 16 years, with a .96 Overnight Rating (Noon-3 p.m. ET/9 a.m.-Noon PT) Saturday on NBC (1.36 Overnight Rating, 2003 U.S. Amateur Men's Finals won on the 37th hole of a sudden-death playoff, from 4-6:15 p.m. ET on NBC), according to data released today by The Nielsen Company.

Men's March Madness Up 11% From Last Year, Women's Edition Nabs 3.68 Million for Title Game

CBS Sports and Turner Sports' coverage of the NCAA Tournament Men's National Championship Game between Virginia and Texas Tech on CBS scored a 12.4/22 HH rating/share, based on Nielsen metered market ratings. The broadcast's 12.4/22 is up 20% over last year (10.3/18) and peaked with a 15.0/30 from 11:30-11:45 PM, ET.

Overall, 2019 NCAA Tournament coverage across TBS, CBS, TNT, and truTV averaged a 7.1/15, up 11% from last year (6.4/14).

The top five rated metered markets were Richmond (31.3/48), Norfolk (23.4/39), Minneapolis (23.3/41), Louisville (23.2/37), and Kansas City (21.1/36).

NCAA March Madness Live set all-time tournament records in live streams (over 100 million) and live hours consumed (over 24 million), up 31% and 29% vs. last year. NCAA March Madness Live generated a record for last night's NCAA Championship Game based on live uniques, with live streams and live hours consumed showing increases of 19% and 7% vs. last year. MML also set all-time daily records in both live hours (eight times) and live streams (five times) throughout this year's tou

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