Rory McIlroy was just one of millions of viewers who tuned in to watch Sunday’s final round of the men’s Olympic golf tournament.
In fact, the finale of the four-day event that started out with low expectations amid high-profile withdrawals and so many Rio-related potential catastrophes went out with a bang that delivered the second-highest overnight TV rating for any 90 minutes of golf programming this year other than the final round of the Masters.
That hour and a half, which featured eventual gold medalist Justin Rose and silver finisher Henrik Stenson dueling down to Rose’s final putt on the 72nd hole, produced a 6.3 overnight rating for the tournament that was simulcast on NBC and Golf Channel, according to SportsMediaWatch.com.
Olympic Golf #s good for NBC & Golf Channel on Sunday: pic.twitter.com/V9VVnnLOeb
— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) August 15, 2016
Fans worldwide had their TV sets turned to Olympic golf during the entire afternoon as well. From noon through about 3:10 p.m. ET, the competition earned the highest household rating (1.02, with 1.6 million viewers) since Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson went head to head at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in 2012.
Even early coverage (6 a.m.-noon) was a huge success for Golf Channel, which recorded its best numbers in that time slot since Woods won the Dubai Desert Classic in 2008.
In a potentially positive note for the "grow the gamers," NBC corralled the "youngest" audience for the Olympic contest (adults 18-49 made up 30 percent of viewers) since its coverage of the 2013 U.S. Open. Indeed, the viewership was younger than any regular-season tour event’s final round in the past four years.