
With Tiger Woods' surprise return to
playing professional golf, as well as being competitive early on, CBS’ airing of the final round of “The Masters” scored 10.2 million Nielsen-measured viewers.
It
was the highest-rated golf event since 2019, when Tiger Woods won "The Masters" for the fifth time.
Woods was playing competitively for the first time since a horrific car
accident in Los Angeles in February 2021, in which he sustained a compound fracture to one leg in addition to other injuries.
Higher viewership also came with Woods in the two
initial rounds played on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday he was within just a few shots of the leader on the day. ESPN, which aired the first two days of the event, witnessed strong results,
averaging 3.3 million viewers -- the highest for the network in four years.
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In 2019 -- a pre-pandemic year -- Woods won his fifth "Masters" title after a long drought at the top
of a major championship. Nielsen ratings for the final round on Sunday averaged 10.8 million.
Major TV advertisers for the event included IBM, Mercedes-Benz, AT&T, Meijer,
Calm, Heineken, Chick-fil-A, and Make-A-Wish, according to iSpot, pulling in some $26.0 million in national TV advertising spend.