It was a rough start to the season for the PGA, with a repeat customer winning its biggest event (boring), while Tiger (injury) and Phil (missed cut) sat on the sidelines. Apparently that was enough to keep you from tuning in, as the numbers showed a 20-year low in terms of viewership.
Gulp.
[ESPN] The average audience for the weekend coverage on CBS was 8.6 million viewers in 6.4 million homes, according to Nielsen ratings finalized Thursday morning. The last time the Masters had numbers that anemic was in 1993, when Bernhard Langer won by 4 strokes. That tournament was watched by 7.9 million viewers in 5.6 million homes.
So we got to thinking: How do you get more people to watch professional golf on a Saturday/Sunday afternoon? Speed up play? Schedule the tournaments at night, under the lights?
Then we saw this…
An auxiliary competition at PGA events, whereby professional golfers drop the stuffy B.S. and basically have an NBA All-Star Weekend Dunk Contest. Except with trick shots. Crazy, we know, but if it’d produce highlights anything like what the Bryan Bros are creating on their YouTube page — we’d definitely watch.
[H/T Bob's Blitz]