What do golf’s TV ratings actually mean? We asked a dozen experts

If you’re a golf fan with a pulse, you’ve recently been exposed to some bickering about TV ratings.

The latest headlines arrived on Valentine’s Day. LIV Golf’s first FS2 broadcast in Saudi Arabia drew 12,000 average viewers, and its first final-round broadcast on FS1 drew 54,000. The same afternoon, the PGA Tour’s final round at the Waste Management Phoenix Open drew 53 times as many viewers, or 2.87 million.

It does not take a mathematics major to know those numbers are separated by orders of magnitude. But it does take an expert to tell you what that means.

Here’s the cold reality of TV viewership data: It is inherently imperfect, inherently confusing, and — if you care about the health of professional golf — inherently important. TV makes up more than half of the PGA Tour’s operating revenue annually, is LIV Golf’s self-appointed white whale, and is an incredibly important piece of the admirable goal (even though it’s become an insipid phrase) to “grow the game.” And yet these facts are complicated by another: Very few people understand the metrics used to make sense of the TV business.

This is why we at the Hot Mic spent last week polling close to a dozen insiders across the media industry for their insights on the state of TV viewership, from seeking dictionary definitions of the terms that matter to chasing down answers to your silliest (and simplest) questions.

Consider the text below your Official Dictionary of Viewership: a glossary of terms you can return to whenever you’d like to cut through the BS and understand what’s really happening in golf. And if you liked what you read, consider signing up for the Hot Mic newsletter to get more of these insights in your inbox each week.

GOLF’s Official Viewership Dictionary

1. Average Viewers

The average number of viewers per minute of a television show.

This is the metric tracked by Nielsen and generally accepted as the “currency” of golf on television. To capture this metric, Nielsen tracks the audience size during each minute of a telecast using a hidden audio signature, then adds those numbers together and divides by the total number of minutes that telecast is on the air.

When we see ratings “information” from a big sporting event or telecast — think the Super Bowl, the SNL 50 Special, or yes, golf on TV — the metric is tracking the average number of viewers per minute. This is different from the total number of people who watched. The Super Bowl, which averaged 127.7 million viewers, would inevitably have had higher or lower viewership than 127.7 million viewers at different points throughout the night, and might have been seen by 200 million or more people overall. The average is the number reported to the public.

2. Total Viewers (or ‘Total Reach’)

The total number of viewers who watched at least one minute of a television show.

Unlike average viewers, this metric tracks the total reach of a telecast, giving advertisers a glimpse into how many unique individuals tuned in to a telecast. This measurement is also tracked by Nielsen, but is not relied upon by networks and advertisers because it does not track the number of people who watched at specific times throughout the night. In other words, most of the time this metric can be ignored.

Much of golf’s viewership bickering surrounds confusion (some of it intentional) about the difference between “average viewership” and “total reach.” It’s helpful to think of the difference between these two metrics a bit like the difference between three units of temperature: Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin.

If you’re from the United States, temperature is measured in Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit (Average Viewers) isn’t the only way to talk about the weather, but it is the way we’ve agreed to talk about it. In other words: if you live in the United States and you’re engaged in a good-faith conversation about the temperature outside, it’s reasonable to assume you’re talking about Fahrenheit.

If your friend told you the temperature but didn’t stipulate he was talking about the temperature in Celsius, he would be misleading you. If he followed that up by arguing Kelvin was a more accurate way to measure temperature, well, he might be right. But in judging the temperature outside, the point isn’t to make a value assessment about the unit of measurement, it’s to know what the hell 20 degrees means.

3. A View

A view is a unit of measurement for an internet video. This data is not (yet) tracked by Nielsen, but it is similar to Nielsen’s “total reach” metrics.

Different websites have different definitions of what constitutes a “view.” On YouTube, a view is generally regarded as a measure of the number of people who watch at least 30 seconds of a video. On Instagram and Facebook, a view is anyone who watches for at least three seconds.

(LIV’s former streaming partners at CaffeineTV famously reported 5 million viewers for the league’s first broadcast on the platform, but they did not specify how they counted views, making the massive number effectively meaningless.)

4. Peak Viewership

The audience size during the most-watched minute of a television show.

“Peak” viewership tells us how many people were watching when the broadcast was at its biggest, and usually, it also tells us when that happened. This number is somewhat useful in golf, which has long television windows that drag down average viewership, particularly if the tournament finishes at an odd time. On a championship Sunday, the peak viewership may be considerably higher than the average, indicating that more fans tuned in as the action wore on.

5. Nielsen

The audience measurement company responsible for compiling most of the United States’ TV viewership data. Nielsen’s methodology has changed several times over the years, but at its core, the company relies on data plumbed from a “representative sample.”

For many years, the sample group consisted of 42,000 households (101,000 people) throughout the United States who agreed to let Nielsen install measuring devices on their televisions. Nielsen scouted the country to find a sample group that roughly correlated to the demographics of the U.S. population, and paid each group a small monthly sum for their inclusion. Nielsen then collected that group’s TV viewership data, extrapolated the numbers over the entirety of the U.S. population, and reported them. More recently, the size of the sample group increased to incorporate bars, restaurants and other “out-of-home” viewing.

Of course, those measurements were (and are) imperfect. Not every television in the United States is being tracked at all times, which means viewership is not 100 percent accurate — a fact that still grates many people I spoke to in the TV business. (Especially in golf, where the core demographic includes the kind of wealthy, older man unlikely to see much to gain from letting Nielsen into his home.)

In my reporting, the general consensus was that Nielsen remained the best of several imperfect solutions. Several people indicated the company’s market power was derived more from the industry’s reliance upon it than from any specific strength, though that could be changing.

6. Big Data + Panel

If you’re very plugged into the ratings world, you may have seen headlines about Nielsen’s switch to Big Data + Panel. Insiders have hailed this shift as one of the most significant developments in the TV ratings world in years, but what does it mean?

Big Data + Panel is a new Nielsen methodology combining the company’s traditional 42,000 household measurement group and data from some 45 million devices across the United States, including set-top boxes and smart TVs.

Nobody fully knows how the data from this new panel will compare to the data from the traditional Nielsen panel, but in theory, it should be a far more accurate representation of the broader TV-viewing population. Given this development, and previous Nielsen struggles with audiences like golf, many within the golf world expect the new panel will show big jumps in viewership for the sport.

Of course, that ratings boost begs more questions: will advertisers view the data as a “new, bigger golf audience” — or as the same golf audience represented more accurately? How accurate is the new ratings system relative to the old one? (Nielsen scored a key accreditation just days ago.) Will the change make a noticeable difference when it comes to dollars and cents? Time will tell, but this was a popular topic of discussion among those in the TV world.

Supplemental Questions

1. Why do we measure by average viewership, and not some other metric?

Because this metric is useful for advertisers. Under this structure, networks can give advertisers a (relatively) precise guess of how many people were watching their ads, which allows advertisers to know, in turn, how successful those ads were at selling products.

2. When should I be on the lookout for potentially questionable data?

In the last few years, LIV has released several viewership statistics referencing total reach data and ignoring much smaller average viewership numbers.

While these total reach numbers are technically accurate, they’re misleading — portraying a much bigger number (the total number of people who tuned in for a telecast) as a much smaller one (the average).

Take, for example, a press release from LIV and the Australian broadcast partner “Seven Network,” which reported 2.7 million viewers watched least year’s event in Adelaide. While the release doesn’t stipulate viewership metrics, considering LIV’s broadcast window and average viewership data, several sources told GOLF.com they believed the network was referencing total reach aggregated across several days.

As a general rule, if you see viewership data that seems unusually large, it’s a good idea to ask whether the data is the “average viewership” or the “total reach.” And, if you can’t get a clear answer (or if the answer is “total reach” with no available average), it’s usually best to tune it out.

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3. Why do we care what the advertisers think?

TV “money” accounts for a large percentage of a sport’s business, and the cost of commercials is responsible for funding it. Without reliable stats to tell advertisers about the effectiveness of their commercials, commercials would not be nearly as valuable. And without revenue from selling commercials, the TV business would be defunct.

If you remember one thing from this story, remember this: Advertisers are the main reason why TV ratings matter.

4. Seriously? Even THIS comes back to “the sponsors”?

Yes, but it’s a good thing! It means objectivity still exists!

If you’re framing viewership discussions around numbers, then PR folks and bad actors can twist themselves into knots to make the numbers look bigger. But if you’re framing viewership discussions around advertisers, there’s much less wiggle room.

Either your numbers will be big enough to indicate your business is growing, your numbers will be within the expected range, or your numbers will be small enough to indicate your business is shrinking or worse, irrelevant.

This is partly why sending intentionally deceitful TV ratings is pointless; it’s largely smoke and mirrors. The advertisers know the truth, and they pay based on it, no matter how you spin it in the public.

5. How is a YouTube view different from a TV viewer?

Well, largely because TV viewership provides much better data to advertisers — and because TV networks and advertisers can be much more explicit about the placement and timing of their advertisements. A YouTube video may have many millions of views, while a golf telecast may only have a few hundred thousand average viewers, but the latter is valued at a higher rate.

As more viewers leave cable TV for streaming, it’s possible that this relationship could invert, but we’re still a long way removed from that reality. (Which is why so many YouTube stars still seem keen on landing traditional TV deals, rather than the other way around.) Everybody’s chasing a good TV rating.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@golf.com.