The condition of the Chevron Championship continues to get worse. Yes, bad weather is out there to ruin the experience, but the viewership also remains a bigger issue. This year, the Masters drew an average of 12.7 million viewers for CBS in the final round. Meanwhile, the Chevron Championship’s viewership doesn’t come close. The highest audience the event has ever recorded was 1.9 million in 2010 — a figure that was finally matched again in 2024. To address this issue, analysts from No Laying Up have the solution.
Recently, four analysts, Chris Solomon, Jordan Perez, Cody McBride, and one more person, sat down on the No Laying Up golf channel to discuss viewership of the LPGA. One of them started with how quiet the third round was and said, “Saturday of a major moving day, the first major of the year on the LPGA. Like it should be a very exciting day, it should be a very exciting broadcast, guys, I was fighting a nap this afternoon.” That’s right, the speaker here got so bored that he was about to sleep during the round.
Frustrated at this, he questioned, “Like, is there anything to add juice to the NBC production? Like that’s where I just come down to, too, is like I oh no they are not selling me on the drama. They are not selling me on anything.” Responding to this, Chris gave a straight answer and said, “I don’t think NBC could have saved today, you know?” So, how do they fix these issues? To this, Jordan Perez chimed in with an interesting solution.
She first said, “How do you define a major to a casual audience when it looks like this on two times a year? And I just don’t know that becomes really frustrating and really sucky.” However, she suggested that LPGA should lean towards golf influencers like Grace Charis, Paige Spiranac, and more. “What could like juice it up, splash it up a little bit. Something I really liked was bringing a few of like Women’s golf-oriented influencers out there and posting about their experience and their time out there and sharing that.”
Charis has 3.7 million followers on her Instagram. Meanwhile, Spiranac boasts 4 million followers. So if the figures like these are on the greens promoting the tournament, it will make things better for the LPGA. “I mean, try something like that. I mean, get them to sit on the broadcast and talk. I don’t know literally just try anything,” Perez added further.
Surprisingly, it wasn’t just Saturday that concluded with a silence; the same thing happened on Friday as well. Beth Ann Nicholas shared this update on X and said, “Pretty quiet out there on the first tee as the last two groups went off.” While analysts here argued that viewership continues to decline on the LPGA, Mel Reid also believes that the league isn’t getting in return despite increasing the prize purse.
Mel Reid compared the LPGA with the PGA Tour
Speaking about numbers, currently the PGA Tour’s average viewership is 2.50 million, meanwhile it’s 900k for the LPGA Tour. With this, one can guess how far the LPGA currently is. It’s true that they continue to increase the prize purse to attract more fans, but it’s not working. “What ticket sales are we doing? What revenue are we bringing back in? You know, the PGA Tour, I’m not here to compare at all, but they do bring a lot of revenue back into the game,” Reid said in a statement.
Although there are golfers like Lydia Ko and Nelly Korda making the front page of the esteemed magazines. This isn’t helping the tour much, and now Mel Reid isn’t sure what could help the league. She said, “I feel like golf is, in a way, getting a little bit left behind. And I don’t know whether that’s a branding, whether we’re just not in the conversations. And I feel like we’re just not, we’re doing something that isn’t quite getting us there.” After all this, inviting the influencers seems the only solution the LPGA has to increase the numbers.
Do you think it will work? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!
The post NBC Broadcast of LPGA Major Under Fire as Paige Spiranac & Others Urged To Help Out: ‘Really Frustrating’NBC Broadcast of LPGA Major Under Fire As Paige Spiranac & Others Urged To Help Out: ‘Really Frustrating’ appeared first on EssentiallySports.