The Tour Championship, which serves as the culmination of the 2025 PGA Tour season, is one of the biggest golf events of the year outside of major championships. And based on the viewership numbers for the final round broadcast of this year’s Tour Championship on NBC, it certainly didn’t disappoint.
According to Josh Carpenter of Sports Business Journal, an average of 4.49 million viewers tuned in to see Tommy Fleetwood end his 163-start winless drought on tour, which had been a big narrative leading into the tournament after back-to-back top five finishes for in the two weeks leading into the event.
Notably, the 4.49 million viewers tuning into Sunday’s broadcast serves as the most-watched single round throughout the PGA Tour season outside of major championship events. It is also a 34 percent year-over-year increase in viewership compared to the final round of the 2024 Tour Championship, which saw 3.36 million viewers watch Scottie Scheffler hoist the FedEx Cup trophy for the first time.
It’s not hard to see why this year’s event fared better from a viewership perspective than last year.
Not only were golf fans curious to see whether Fleetwood would choke away another lead in the final round of a tournament, but this year’s Tour Championship marks the first under a new format that eliminates starting strokes based on the season-long FedEx Cup standings. While the old format rewarded players that had strong seasons, it often led to confusion and finishes that lacked excitement for fans.
Sunday’s final round broadcast of the also served as a stark reminder to golf fans just how much better the PGA Tour is faring than its direct competitor, LIV Golf.
LIV Golf went head-to-head with the PGA Tour’s premiere event on Sunday with a tournament that serves as the culmination of its own calendar year, the LIV Golf Michigan Team Championship, which aired on Fox. Notably, the final round of the LIV Michigan event on Fox pulled in less than a tenth of the audience of the PGA Tour’s season finale, with just 422,000 viewers tuning in to see Jon Rahm’s Legion XIII win the Team Championship in a playoff over Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers GC, according to Josh Carpenter.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.