TV Ratings: The Masters Drops 20 Percent

Ratings for the full Masters week are now out, and 2024’s version ranks as the lowest since the COVID impacted years of 2020 and 2021. There was a brief moment when four players shared the lead at the 2024 Masters, but Scottie Scheffler took care of business quickly enough and strolled to what qualifies as an “easy” Masters victory — a four-stroke triumph that wasn’t in doubt for most of the second nine.

Perhaps as a result, Sunday’s final round averaged 9.59 million viewers on CBS, according to Sports Media Watch, a 22.8% decline from last year’s 12.06 million. Scheffler’s win two years ago averaged 10.17 million viewers. Worth noting: Sunday's final round was down 20 percent against last year's victory by Jon Rahm, but last year's final round fell on Easter Sunday, which created a significantly higher out-of-home percentage of viewers — 21 percent in 2023, as opposed to 9 percent this year.

This past Sunday’s Masters had a peak viewership of 12.56 million viewers. This ranks as the least-watched Masters since 1993. But on the glass-half-full side, Sunday’s final round placed ahead of four of the most recent five World Series games, according to Sports Media Watch, and every Daytona 500 of the past seven years.

Golf’s ratings have declined sharply across all tournaments this season, and many observers had looked to the Masters as a validation of the idea that ratings have declined because many major personalities have left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf. But it’s also possible that the Masters’ decline reflects just how many fans are in the hell-with-all-of-them viewership bloc.

Augusta National chairman Fred Ridley spoke about the decline in TV ratings earlier in the week. While not pointing a finger directly at the LIV-PGA Tour split, he suggested that it could be a factor.