Palm Beach Market Has Highest TV Ratings For Open Championship
Posted by Dan Hauser on Thursday, July 30th, 2015 at 11:46am.
The West Palm Beach TV market had the highest numbers for any market in the United States for the 2015 Open Championship.
Despite the Open Championship being aired on cable on ESPN, the 39th TV market in the country posted a 2.9 rating, two tenths of a point higher than the second rated market, Louisville, KY (2.7).
Nationally, ESPN had a 1.4 overall U.S. rating, which was up 24% from 2014 when Palm Beach Gardens resident Rory Mcllroy won by two shots over Rickie Fowler and Sergio Garcia.
Even the weather delays the plagued the majority of the tournament didn’t stop golf fans from tuning in to see if Jordan Spieth was going to get one step closer to the single season grand slam. Saturday’s 1.2 national rating was up 33% from 2014 and Sunday’s third round 2.1 resulted in a 110% increase from last year.
Monday’s delayed final round had a 2.1 rating and peaked at 3.7 during the playoff when Zach Johnson defeated Marc Leishman and Old Palm resident Louis Oosthuizen.
Joining the West Palm Beach market among cities that topped the ratings was the Tampa-St Pete market. They had the third highest numbers, bringing in a 2.4 rating.
ESPN wasn’t the only network that saw increased numbers due to the Open Championship. Golf Channel had 8 million unique viewers. That was the largest one week viewer total since the 2009 Open when they had 8.3 million viewers tune in.