Without Tiger Woods, ESPN’s First-Round Masters Viewership Drops 28%

An injured Tiger Woods missed the Masters Champions Dinner. And his absence loomed over ESPN’s broadcast of the first round of the 2025 Masters Tournament.

Without Woods in the field, ESPN’s coverage averaged 2.3 million viewers (including out-of-home viewers) Thursday. That’s a 28% drop from the 3.2 million viewers for last year’s first round when Woods was in action. Just the presence of the five-time Green Jacket winner in 2024 produced the highest first-round viewership since 2015. 

In comparison, Thursday’s number was good but not great considering fan favorite Rory McIlroy was playing well as he tries to capture his first Masters title. ESPN also offered some excellent features, including Marty Smith’s great piece on Woods’s iconic chip-in in No. 16 in 2005 that turned into an insta-Nike commercial.  

Airing from 3 p.m. to 7:23 p.m. ET, ESPN’s live coverage Thursday was the most-watched sports program for the day across all broadcast and cable TV networks. ESPN’s Welcome to the Masters lead-in program, which aired from 1 to 3 p.m. ET, averaged 455,000 viewers.

Thursday’s first-round viewership mirrored the Tiger Woods Effect on TV ratings from 2022 to 2023. When Woods teed it up in the afternoon in 2022, the first round drew 2.8 million viewers. But when the 15-time major tournament winner began his first round in the morning in 2023, outside of the ESPN coverage window, the first-round audience dropped 11% to 2.5 million. 

Thankfully for CBS Sports, the weekend leaderboard is stocked with big names such as McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau, and young Norwegian phenom Viktor Hovland. 

The Masters is annually the most-watched golf tournament on TV. But final-round viewership for last year’s tournament—won for the second time in three years by Scheffler—sank 20% to 9.59 million viewers. This year’s first-round viewership again bears out a truism about the human ratings magnet Woods: He doesn’t move golf’s TV ratings needle; he is the needle.