They say one man is never bigger than the sport but there was one conversation that I heard many times over up at Royal Birkdale last week from the hospitality tents to the media centre – will we (media, sponsors, PR agencies & spectators) miss Tiger Woods?
Initial evidence would seem to suggest the answer lies in what side of the Atlantic you’re on. A nervous American TV executive told me that their viewing figures would ‘drop off a cliff’ while Woods kept his knee up at home. Evidence from previous tournaments would seem to back him up – US audiences regularly suffer a fifty percent drop when Woods is not involved at the top of a leaderboard.
Over here it was a different story though with an impressive though unofficial, over-night peak on BBC of 4.7 million watching Harrington collect his second consecutive Claret Jug. This was down on last year’s peak of 5.7 million BUT this figure was far larger than either of the previous years – when Woods was the winner. In addition, the story of a resurgent Greg Norman kept the pages and airtime filled and injected The Open with some much needed romance (and glamour from the new Mrs Norman). The galleries weren’t affected either with over 200,000 through the gates over the four days despite the inclement conditions making it the sixth highest attended in Open history.
Initial evidence is that the UK audience was not at all affected by the loss of Tiger – indeed it raised the hopes of a local winner. The more difficult question, that only the next few months will tell for the American TV exec, will be the longer term affect this will have on US audiences (the economic driver of the sport) and critically The Ryder Cup in a few months.
By Dominic Curran on July 23rd, 2008
Tags: Golf, Public relations, Television audiences, Tiger Woods
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I took in coverage of The Open while I was over in the States last week, on TNT and ABC. The ‘Tiger aspect’ was very evident initially, but as soon as Greg Norman got to the top of the leaderboard he (and Chris Evert) became the big story – Norman’s still an icon over there, and of course Chris Evert was/is in many respects the ultimate American sporting heroine. Without Tiger, no doubt the viewing figures will be down, but it’ll be interesting to see by how much.
That American TV Exec was right to be nervous – the viewing figures in the US did “drop off a cliff”. Network ratings were down just over 50% year on year, and cable ratings down 35%.