Ratings Roundup: Playoffs Draw Weak Numbers

At some point these premium sponsors are going to get tired of paying a huge price for "playoff" events and drawing audiences comparable to a Florida swing Friday. Or, to put things in perspective, half the audience of competing telecasts such as the U.S. Women's Open final or the Little League World Series.

Do keep in mind these are average audience sizes over pretty long telecast windows, but so are the college football games drawing viewers away starting Labor Day weekend. Let's start with round one of the playoffs, The Barclays.

According to Sports Business Daily, the 2014 Barclays got a final round 1.9 overnight Nielsen rating. Third round coverage on Saturday drew a 1.4 overnight. The Little League World Series game in a similar window drew a 3.3.

Round two of "The Playoffs" means the Deutsche Bank Championship and a Labor Day Monday finish. While the Golf Channel lead-in numbers look to be pretty typical based on Douglas Pucci's always excellent roundup, (there was, however, an overall 23% dip in channel viewers over the same week a year ago), NBC's coverage saw meager ratings.

Sunday's DB Championship three-hour third round telecast on NBC drew a 1.5 for an average of 2.2 million viewers, while the 2014 final round yielded a 2.1 overnight rating on NBC, which Sports Media Watch reported was down 16% from 2013 (2.5) and down 38% from 2012 (3.4).

Finally, Saturday's 2014 BMW Championship third round drew a 1.4 for an average of 1.9 million viewers, while the final round wasn't much better drawing a 1.9 and luring 2.7 million viewers for Billy Horschel's win.

That was in contrast to the U.S. Women's Open tennis final, which was played for the second half of the BMW's broadcast window and drew a 4.0 for Serena Williams' win over Caroline Wozniacki, Sports Business Journal's Austin Karp reports. So much for tennis as a dying sport.

So to review 2014 final round overnight ratings of late…

WGC Bridgestone  3.1
PGA Championship 6.0
Wyndham Championship 1.3
The Barclays 1.9
Deutsche Bank Championship 2.1
BMW Championship 1.9

The fairly steady Golf Channel ratings for early round and early weekend coverage would seem to indicate that the core audience remains engaged while the network numbers would suggest that mainstream viewers are ready for something other than playoff golf this time of year.