Some might call Scottie Scheffler “boring,” but he seems to attract people to their televisions.
According to the Sports Business Journal, the final round of the BMW Championship last week, where Scheffler came from behind to claim his fifth title of the season, drew 3.5 million people on NBC. That's an increase of 43% from the 2.5 million people who watched Keegan Bradley’s BMW win last year. Plus, Viktor Hovland pulled in 3.0 million in ‘23 (on CBS) and Patrick Cantlay’s triumph had 2.8 million on NBC in ‘22.
In a Q&A earlier this year with Sports Illustrated, 2009 British Open champion Stewart Cink said Scheffler “is probably not the guy that people are turning on the TV to watch like they used to with Tiger Woods.” There may be some truth to that statement, but Scheffler’s victories have mostly yielded strong television ratings.
In Scheffler’s first win of the year at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, which the world No. 1 tied the PGA Tour’s 72-hole scoring record in an eight-stroke romp, had 2.9 million viewers on CBS, up 66% from last season, and the largest for the tournament since 2017.
Two weeks later, Scheffler’s PGA Championship triumph saw a dip, though. CBS drew in 4.76 million people on Sunday in Scheffler’s five-stroke win, down 4% from Xander Schauffele’s nail-biter victory over Bryson DeChambeau in ’24. Granted, Scheffler pulled in 5% more than Brooks Koepka in 2023.
Scheffler’s successful title defense at Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament in June had 3.063 million on CBS, up 7% from 2024. And Scheffler’s runaway British Open triumph on NBC attracted 4.1 million viewers, up 21% from last year. It was the most-watched British Open since 2022.
And as Scheffler was beefing up his impressive resume at the BMW Championship, LIV Golf in Indianapolis, happening simultaneously on Fox, drew 426,000 viewers. The rival circuit’s biggest television rating was 484,000 in the final round of LIV Miami at Doral, the week before the Masters.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Scottie Scheffler’s BMW Win Delivers Yet Another Ratings Bump for PGA Tour.
