TV Ratings For The PGA Tour's Opening FedEx Cup Playoff Event Take Gargantuan Hit, But Why?

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The TV ratings for last week's FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, the first of three FedEx Cup Playoff events, are in, and they're nothing short of abysmal when comparing them to last year's numbers. When comparing last year's finish to this year's, the drop-off between the numbers doesn't appear to make much sense, but the explanation for the bad ratings may be straightforward.

Lucas Glover took down Patrick Cantlay in a playoff during the 2023 FedEx St. Jude with 3.207 million tuning in to watch the event unfold on CBS. The playoff added drama to the situation plus pushed the broadcast more into a prime time slot on that Sunday evening, but that doesn't account for the major difference between last year's final-round ratings and this year's.

According to Sports Business Journal's Josh Carpenter, last Sunday's final round in Memphis only drew 2.211 million viewers to NBC to catch Hideki Matsuyama birdie his final two holes to claim a two-shot victory over Xander Schauffele and Viktor Hovland.

That's more than a 30% drop between last year's final-round ratings and this year's, and this year's tournament ended up having a Top Four leaderboard consisting of four players ranked inside the top eight in the world.

The 2022 edition of the FedEx St. Jude also featured a playoff finish with Will Zalatoris eventually getting the best of Sepp Straka with 2.967 million tuning into the broadcast.

Playoffs certainly play a major factor in all of this - sports fans love drama - but to say they draw in approximately 1 million more viewers than non-playoff finishes seems a bit disingenuous, especially when we're talking non-major championships. Pinning everything on playoffs seems too good to be true if you're the PGA Tour looking at these vastly different ratings over the years as well.

Hideki Matsuyama earned a win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in dramatic fashion, but TV ratings show not many cared. (Photo by James Gilbert/PGA TOUR via Getty Images)

Simple burnout is why so few people tuned into this year's FedEx St. Jude Championship.

The PGA Tour's schedule has been stale and over-saturated for quite some time. Golf fans are fed the same tournaments on the same golf courses with a change in date here and there, and by mid-August, many are simply checked out.

The 2024 PGA Tour schedule was ‘unique' with the Paris Olympics falling two weeks before the start of the playoffs, and while the golf in Paris was some of the most-exciting we'd seen all year, it put a pause on the Tour's season, that pause was resumed with a weak-fielded Wyndham Championship, and asking fans to buy into the start of the playoffs is a big ask in today's still very much divided golf world.

The fact that Scottie Scheffler entered the week with a lead of approximately 7 billion points in the FedEx Cup standings didn't necessarily help build drama and draw eyeballs to the golf in Memphis either.

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Mark covers all sports at OutKick while keeping a close eye on the world of professional golf. He graduated from the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga before earning his master's degree in journalism from the University of Tennessee. He somehow survived living in Knoxville despite ‘Rocky Top’ being his least favorite song ever written. Before joining OutKick, he wrote for various outlets including SB Nation, The Spun, and BroBible. Mark was also a writer for the Chicago Cubs Double-A affiliate in 2016 when the team won the World Series. He's still waiting for his championship ring to arrive. Follow him on Twitter @itismarkharris.