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The final round of the Masters averaged nearly 14 million viewers on CBS Sunday afternoon, as Rory McIlroy became the first golfer to win back-to-back Green Jackets since Tiger Woods in 2002.
With 13.995 million viewers, CBS drew its most-watched Masters final round since 2015, when the network averaged exactly 14 million viewers for Jordan Spieth’s first major championship victory.
The 2026 final round is up 8% from the audience of 12.71 million viewers that tuned into CBS last April as McIlroy defeated fellow European Justin Rose in a dramatic playoff to win his first Masters and complete the career grand slam.
Coverage peaked at just over 20 million viewers Sunday, which is the largest Masters figure since 2013, when Adam Scott won, and a prime Tiger Woods finished in a tie for fourth place. Last year’s peak audience was 19.54 million viewers.
The CBS broadcast and production team struggled late Sunday, as the telecast was not able to show where McIlroy’s approach shot into the 18th green landed for nearly a minute, and also missed where his playing partner Cam Young hit his second shot on 18. It was a rare miss for the longtime Masters partner.
This year’s Masters is the first since Nielsen began exclusively using its Big Data + Panel methodology, which has generally led to live sports broadcasts seeing a noticeable uptick in overall ratings compared to what they would have drawn under the old panel-only method.
Third-round coverage on Saturday averaged 8.1 million viewers on CBS, up 14% from 7.6 million last year, and the most-watched Masters third round since 2019, which was Woods’ last win at Augusta.
McIlroy held a six-shot lead after Friday’s second round, but saw that vanish during Saturday’s third round, ending up tied with Cam Young for the 54-hole lead heading into Sunday. No. 1-ranked Scottie Scheffler began the final round four strokes back of McIlroy and Young, but made a Sunday charge to ultimately finish in second place, just one stroke behind McIlroy.
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