The primary TGL broadcast pulled in 919,000 common viewers on ESPN.
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The TGL is formally off the bottom, and the identical might be stated for its TV rankings.
Golf’s brand-new simulator league aired to 919,000 common viewers on ESPN on Tuesday evening, a strong however not earth-shattering complete for its first-ever telecast, in accordance with SBJ’s Austin Karp and first reported by the X (previously Twitter) deal with @YeahClickClack. Notably, the TGL telecast was up by 200,000 common viewers over the identical time slot a yr in the past and attracted a bigger viewers than its lead-in, the Pitt-Duke basketball sport, indicating golf followers tuned to ESPN particularly to look at the brand new league.
When you’re a TV-savvy golf fan feeling considerably stunned by these numbers — in both path — we don’t blame you. The TGL’s numbers positioned them nearly completely between the tough averages for LIV telecasts on the CW and PGA Tour telecasts on CBS and NBC. Does that inform us one thing concrete concerning the new league relative to its tour counterparts?
The reply isn’t any. TV rankings are inherently subjective, and it’s a lot too early to match the TGL to its tour counterparts. One of the simplest ways to know a league’s success is to match it in opposition to itself, and to regulate for as many variables as potential. Is the viewers rising or shrinking over time? And if that’s the case, by how a lot? Can the viewers change be attributed to airing on cable vs. streaming vs. broadcast TV? In fact, change over time is the one knowledge level we don’t have for the TGL, which is a component of what is going to make the following a number of weeks of rankings studies so essential to its sustained success.
Nonetheless, there are issues to study from week 1’s rankings, and I’ll try to distill just a few of the important thing takeaways under.
First off, I’d say these rankings qualify as barely higher than anticipated. On a scale from “smash-hit” to “utter failure,” I’d put the TGL week 1 viewers nearly squarely within the center, maybe trending just a few ticks within the constructive path. A couple of days in the past, I predicted within the neighborhood of 700,000 common viewers for the TGL as a strong baseline for week 1, basing that prediction off ESPN’s month-to-month averages, which hover round 800,000 at the moment of yr. The TGL advantages from airing in primetime, when the viewers dimension must be a lot bigger. I figured the helpful timeslot can be canceled out by the league’s novelty and the absence of the league’s most important stars from week 1, and I felt bearish concerning the total quantity after the primary match resulted in a blowout. (Scores are the common variety of viewers watching in anyone minute of a telecast, and people numbers might be harmed when viewers tune out en masse early due to a blowout, or when viewers lose consideration due to a heavy sequence of commercials — two issues may have occurred within the last hour on Tuesday.)
When you’re a TGL optimist, you’re possible pointing to the dearth of week 1 star energy and the blowout as the explanation why we are able to anticipate the numbers to leap from right here, notably with Tiger Woods competing in week 2 on the day after ESPN hosts its greatest telecast of the yr, the NFL Wild Card sport. To that I’d agree. We are prone to get a bigger week 2 viewers, and within the larger image, there are causes to be excited: the telecast moved shortly, the gamers contributed gamely, and the overall suggestions for the league was supportive. It’s additionally spectacular that the league managed to wrangle these week 1 numbers and not using a sturdy lead-in from the basketball sport.
But it surely’s essential to make clear that optimism shouldn’t be the identical factor as certainty — and we’re nonetheless many rankings studies away from certifying the TGL’s success. The league nonetheless has to show that it will possibly generate TV audiences when its novelty has worn off, and it wants to point out that it will possibly flip the Tiger/Wild Card tailwinds into viewership for, say, the Atlanta Drive vs. The Bay on Feb 17. That’s a giant ask, and the jury will stay out till the rankings have confirmed us in any other case.
For now, the information is sweet. We are able to say confidently after week 1 that the TGL shouldn’t be a right away flop. We are able to agree that the primary batch of numbers is sweet, and so they may get higher nonetheless. However we must always mood that optimism with a dose of actuality: long-term TV rankings development remains to be the single-largest problem for the league, and we all know nothing about how these numbers will look in just a few weeks.
In different phrases, preserve your eyes peeled. The solutions are coming quickly. Simply not as we speak.
