Saturday, May 16, 2026

PGA Tour TV Ratings: Fleetwood’s Breakthrough Caps Playoff Surge

Tommy Fleetwood’s dramatic Tour Championship win delivered big TV ratings and capped a successful postseason viewership stretch for the PGA Tour.

Aug 24, 2025; Atlanta, Georgia, USA; Tommy Fleetwood holds the FedExCup Trophy on the 18th green after winning the TOUR Championship golf tournament.
Brett Davis-Imagn Images

Tommy Fleetwood’s dramatic Tour Championship win delivered big TV ratings and capped a successful postseason viewership stretch for the PGA Tour.

NBC averaged 4.49 million viewers for Sunday’s final round, according to Nielsen ratings. That’s up 34% from the 3.36 million viewers who watched the final round of the 2024 Tour Championship, which was won by Scottie Scheffler. On Sunday, Fleetwood earned $10 million for his first victory on the PGA Tour in 164 starts.

The Tour Championship used a new format this year, as the final 30 players competed in a standard 72-hole stroke tournament, with the winner also being declared the season-long FedExCup champion. From 2019 to 2024, the controversial “starting strokes” format was used, which gave advantages based on FedExCup points. But that format was abandoned midseason.

All three events of the FedExCup playoffs saw ratings boosts on NBC Sports platforms. 

The final round of the FedEx St. Jude Championship, the postseason opener, drew 3.6 million viewers on NBC, up 71% from last year’s edition. For the BMW Championship, the penultimate tournament of the PGA Tour season, NBC averaged 3.5 million viewers, up 43% over 2024.

TV ratings for the PGA Tour have mostly rebounded across the board this year. 

CBS averaged 2.97 million viewers for its portion of the season, which was up 17% over 2024. Final figures for NBC’s portion of the PGA Tour season are still being determined, but the strong finish should help the network to an overall boost.

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