Australian summer of golf records great TV audience figures

Record TV audiences announced across Australia’s big four golf tournaments.

There was some good news announced last week about Channel Seven’s coverage of the four big Australian golf tournaments this summer.

Record viewers were recorded across all four major Australian golf tournaments; the Perth International, Australian Masters, Australian Open and Australian PGA Championship.

From the press release:

In the first year in which all four major events were broadcast by Channel Seven, Australia’s premier sports channel showed their support with  strong pre-promotion and outstanding extended coverage to ensure that all Australian’s had the opportunity to watch the marathon play-off at the Australian PGA Championship.

Of the four televised events, which included the ISPS HANDA Perth International, BetEasy Masters, Emirates Australian Open and Australian PGA Championship; the Emirates Australian Open performed extremely well with average weekend audiences of 566,000.

Australian audiences then spoke when two weeks later the Australian PGA Championship ended in an epic three-way play-off, requiring an additional 1.5 hours of coverage resulting in a peak of 960,000 metro only viewers and a weekend average audience of 478,500, with Sunday itself averaging 682,000 viewers.

In a time when golf clubs are struggling to keep members, it’s good to hear that TV viewing of the game can still draw decent numbers on free-to-air TV.

It may go some way to encouraging more free-to-air TV coverage of future golf tournaments, and it seems Channel Seven are already on board for next year.

Channel Seven’s Head of Sport, Saul Shtein said they were also thrilled with the results.

“At Seven we’re committed to bringing the best of Australian sport into lounge-rooms around the country, and it’s no surprise that the quality and drama of the golf this year has been matched by terrific TV audiences. We look forward to another great year in 2015.”