GAINESVILLE, Va. — The Solheim Cup tees off Friday morning at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club just outside Washington, D.C., and the three-day USA-Europe women’s team event is expected to break multiple records off the course.
Total attendance is expected to surpass the record 130,000 fans who made it out to Solheim Cup competition days, practice rounds, and other activities in 2021 in Toledo. The liveliest spot will be the 2,000-seat mini-stadium built around the first tee box, giving the golfers a loud team sports setting they don’t normally experience.
This is the first Solheim Cup being played at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, which borders Lake Manassas. It has hosted four Presidents Cups between 1994 and 2005, as well as a PGA Tour event in 2015.
Solheim Cup organizers—the LPGA and Ladies European Tour—are working with SeatGeek for the first time, and before this week, ticket revenue had already surpassed the record sum from three years ago, the last time the event was in the U.S. The event has grown its top-tier sponsor list from three to five, leading to a 200% increase in revenue there.
Ready for Action
U.S. viewership of the Solheim Cup should be up from recent years, thanks to more coverage hours on the main NBC network channel.
NBC Sports will have more than 28 hours of live on-course action. Golf Channel has the event Friday and the early windows on Saturday and Sunday. But over the weekend, a record six hours will air on NBC, nearly double the total from 2021.
In 2021, NBC’s coverage averaged roughly 756,000 viewers on Saturday and Sunday. That year’s event finished on a Monday, averaging 588,000 viewers on the Golf Channel. All of those numbers were down double-digit percentage points from the previous Solheim Cup in the U.S. in 2017. When the Solheim Cup is in Europe, the entire event is shown on the Golf Channel due to the time difference.
