ESPN's ubiquity is always a given in any comparison, but in the year between the announcement of the Tour deal and the first telecast, Golf Channel pushed its distribution above 75 million households.
Says Moffett, "In practical terms there's not much difference between 75 and 90. Golf Channel is almost always offered on newer digital tiers, which skews to a much more affluent demographic. The 15 million who don't get the channel are almost exclusively analog customers, and those households probably don't have many golf fans anyway."
The debate about Golf Channel viewership took an interesting turn during the Mercedes-Benz Championship when, the day before the inaugural telecast, The Orlando Sentinel published some startling ratings numbers.
Citing Nielsen research, the story reported "the average total number of people watching from Aug. 18 (2006) to Dec. 24 over a 24-hour day."
ESPN weighed in with 1.15 million, while Golf Channel had a minuscule 44,000. In a flash these numbers were picked up by other news outlets.
In Maui, Golf Channel execs were apoplectic that the period of time selected came during the heart of ESPN's football season — the slowest time of the year for golf. All of this set the stage for the release of the early-season ratings, surely the most scrutinized digits in golf since Robert de Vicenzo botched his scorecard at the 1968 Masters.
Following the Mercedes, Street & Smith's Sports Business Daily reported that the '07 numbers — a daily average of 370,728 households — were down 44% from ESPN's four-round coverage a year earlier. Again, the report was widely cited.
There is a more nuanced way to look at the ratings. Street & Smith's, like most media outlets, reported only the numbers for the live telecast. Golf Channel research over the season's first four months has found that 92% of the viewers of the prime-time reair didn't watch the earlier telecast during the day. (Frankly, you have to wonder about the 8% who do watch it twice.)
Golf Channel's thinking is, "It's not a replay, it's a second chance," says spokesman Dan Higgins. So in calculating viewership, Golf Channel combines both telecasts since they have essentially two audiences. Using that measuring stick, the number of households for the Mercedes was off only 18% from ESPN's '06 numbers.
Using the combined numbers again, Golf Channel surpassed the previous year's ratings by the third tournament of the year, as both the first and the second round of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic pulled in higher ratings than they did in '06. Thursday at Pebble Beach did too.
Golf Channel's first blockbuster came with the Accenture Match Play Championship in late February, when its combined telecasts beat ESPN's '06 numbers three days running.
During Friday's action, when Tiger Woods was in a dogfight with Nick O'Hern, Golf Channel pulled a combined 1.7 rating, the highest in the channel's history, accounting for just under 1.3 million households.
"Candidly, we're delighted with the numbers," says Finchem. "We feel as if we're two years ahead of where we anticipated we'd be."
The Tour is also enjoying the effects of strong crosspromotion, with ratings for the Champions tour up by 41% so far in '07.
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