Runner-up Tiger Woods never quite found his groove in last weekend’s Masters, and neither did CBS, which carried the final two rounds. Ratings were off slightly from last year.
Not so ESPN, which carried the first two rounds of play this year for the first time as Trevor Immelman won his first major event, well ahead of Woods.
ESPN’s Friday second-round coverage of the year’s first major PGA Tour event of the year drew 3 million households, 26 percent better than the 2.4 million who tuned in to USA last year.
That gave it the best viewership for a golf event in cable history.
ESPN also averaged a record 0.9 rating among adults 18-34, according to Nielsen.
It marked the best numbers ever for the Masters’ cable portion in those demographics. Thursday’s first-round coverage, which like Friday aired from 4 to 7 p.m., averaged 2.08 million households.
That compares to a solid but unspectacular Masters on CBS. Saturday’s third-round coverage was even to last year at a 6.1 overnight household rating, and Sunday’s average slipped 2 percent from the previous year, from a 9.1 to an 8.9.
Why such dramatically different showings?
Certainly Woods was one factor. Broadcast ratings tend to rise and fall depending on how Woods is playing.
Though Woods finished second for the second straight year, by Sunday he was no longer in serious contention, with Immelman having zoomed out to a large lead.
Woods fared little better on Saturday, when he trailed by six strokes and was in fifth place by the end of play.
But ESPN wasn’t hurt by the Tiger factor because it wasn't nearly as dependent on it to draw in viewers as a dedicated sports network. Many of its viewers were going to watch regardless.
If anything, the Masters probably benefited by switching to a sports-only network from USA, which while having a huge audience rarely shows sporting events outside of the Masters.
But more important was the heavy promotion ESPN put behind the event.
On every “SportsCenter” preview story or ESPNews update, there was a mention that the Masters was being carried by ESPN for the first time.
The network also televised the pre-Masters Par 3 Contest, which always gets lots of newspaper attention but had never aired on TV before, getting viewers excited about the coming tournament.
Finally, the Masters’ growing digital presence likely helped ESPN’s ratings.
The network had web rights to the tourney last year as well, but this year viewing of Masters-related web video shot up 117 percent compared with last year, and ESPN’s video podcast became the top sports podcast on iTunes for the full four-day event.
