This week’s Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy golf league premiere drew nearly a million viewers on ESPN, according to Nielsen numbers reported Thursday by Front Office Sports.
Even though TGL’s co-creators were off duty, Tuesday night’s broadcast drew an average of 919,000 viewers during the 9-11 pm ET time slot.
To put that in perspective, that’s a bigger audience than any LIV Golf broadcast on The CW in 2023 and 2024, and bigger than last week’s PGA Tour season opener (The Sentry) on Golf Channel and NBC, according to Sports Media Watch. .
At the same time last year on ESPN, the Duke-Pittsburgh men’s college basketball game drew 717,000 viewers.
In Tuesday night’s TGL 15-hole opener, Bay Golf Club defeated New York Golf Club 9-2 at the SoFi Center in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.
Woods and McIlroy were both in attendance and joined ESPN play-by-play announcer Matt Barrie in the booth.
The first match in the six-team TGL featuring Woods will take place when his Jupiter Links Golf Club takes on Los Angeles Golf Club on Tuesday at 7 pm ET on ESPN. McIlroy’s Boston Common Golf will face Woods’ team on Jan. 27.
The 15-game regular season begins on March 4, followed by the playoffs later that month.
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