YouTube golf has exploded in recent years, as content creators have captured a new audience interested in the more casual side of the sport. At the same time, professional golf’s TV ratings are struggling.
Rory McIlroy, the No. 3–ranked golfer in the world, is well aware of the disconnect.
“YouTube is like golf entertainment adjacent, whatever,” McIlroy said ahead of this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “Those guys are killing it. They found a niche and it’s really cool and it serves a purpose for a lot of people. But look, I would much rather sit down and watch real golfers play real tournaments and that’s just my opinion. That to me is more entertaining.”
Outside of the four major championships, the PGA Tour’s final-round Sunday broadcasts averaged 2.2 million viewers in 2024, according to Nielsen ratings, which is down 19% from 2023.
The PGA Tour recently launched what it calls a “creator council” with top content creator individuals and groups with a stated goal of developing “shared strategies for content development and fan engagement.” The tour has also expanded last year’s Creator Classic—which featured 16 YouTubers in a nine-hole match ahead of the Tour Championship—into a three-event creator series this year.
The hope is that fans of said content creators will show a stronger interest in PGA Tour content and most importantly live tournaments.
But golf fans potentially being more interested in content creators than the pros isn’t the only problem in McIlroy’s mind.
“I can see when the golf consumer might get a little fatigued of everything that’s sort of available to them,” he said. “So, to scale it back a little bit and maybe have a little more scarcity in some of the stuff that we do, like the NFL, I think might not be a bad thing.”
Men’s pro golf in the U.S. is a crowded landscape right now, between the PGA Tour, LIV Golf, and the newly launched TGL, the indoor team league cofounded by McIlroy and Tiger Woods.
