Should Golf Be Worried About the NFL’s Broadcast Shadow? Jim Nantz Doesn’t Think So
In case you need a reminder, this week’s PGA Tour event started on Wednesday and will end on Saturday evening. Why? The NFL. That’s why.
For the third time, the Farmers Insurance Open is shifting its traditional Thursday-Sunday schedule to accommodate the NFL’s conference championship games, which start with the Kansas City Chiefs-Baltimore Ravens showdown at 3 p.m. on CBS.
Although it has been deemed successful (as evidenced by the three-peat), the scheduling move did require some adjustments after it was first instituted by the Century Club of San Diego, the nonprofit that administers the Farmers Insurance Open.
For one, the players in the field simply have less time to prepare for the event, especially if traveling from a Sunday finish at the American Express the week prior. Fans need to be reminded of the shift (Wednesday tee times still don’t feel normal). And of course, CBS’s iconic anchor Jim Nantz had to rethink his travel for the week. The longtime sportscaster will once again call the Torrey Pines action remotely, from the site of the AFC Championship game in Baltimore.
But all those knots have seemingly been worked out by now, and the positive impact of the Saturday evening finish is huge: The Farmers Insurance Open final round won’t be overshadowed by football.
“I’m all for the Saturday night finish,” Nantz told Sports Illustrated on a Zoom call on Tuesday.
Sellers Shy, the executive producer of CBS golf is in the same camp: “It’s an incredible opportunity for us at CBS Sports. Now I’m able to brand a three-day CBS Sports presentation … we organically fall into a third day of providing the best sports coverage that we feel is out there.”
Nantz will call the Farmers Insurance Open for CBS from the site of the AFC Championship game for the third year in a row.
Chris Condon/PGA TOUR
Players even seem to enjoy the change as well. Last year, Justin Thomas said he was “ecstatic” about the adjustment.
“I got to watch football on Sunday,” he said from Torrey Pines in 2023. “I was ecstatic about it. Even so much so that I pushed the Tour that we do it during the entire playoffs because I love football and I love watching football.”
Why doesn’t the PGA Tour listen to Thomas and stage Saturday finishes more often if the Farmers Insurance formula has worked so well? Nantz doesn’t sound opposed to the idea. But he does believe that the exercise of continually comparing the NFL to golf is futile. Golf will always live in its own special world.
“Golf in the media landscape is on very solid footing. You can't get caught up in trying to compare it to the NFL, because there is nothing that can compare it to the NFL in terms of audience draw,” Nantz says. “I just happened to have a game last weekend that averaged 50 million people and when the field goal was missed at the end, I think it was 57 million people watching.”
Those NFL viewership numbers will make any golf fan shudder. The final round of the 2023 Masters garnered 12.06 million watchers—a fraction of the Chiefs vs. Bills viewership. Last Sunday’s numbers at the American Express were up 37%, from 391,000 viewers to 574,000 thanks to Nick Dunlap’s historic win as an amateur. The NFL divisional playoff between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers drew 37.5 million.
It’s easy to look at the figures and wonder: How will our sport ever compete? Are we finally starting to see the consequences of the LIV vs. PGA Tour split?
In response to that 50.4 million figure that CBS released on Tuesday, the PGA Tour’s Ben An made a desperate plea: “Can someone step up and date someone famous?” Everyone knows that the Taylor Swift effect is unbeatable.
But Nantz believes PGA Tour golf has something that is inimitable as well—loyalty. Not just loyalty from fans and players (well, some players) but from TV networks like his own.
“Golf on a good week generates just a small fraction of those ratings. But that audience is loyal. They're there every week and they're passionate about it. It means something to them. It's an honor to try to be able to broadcast the PGA tour to that fan base on a weekly basis,” Nantz says.
“How big is golf to CBS? Look at the tonnage that we produce a year. Eighteen tournaments and eight signature events, the majors—we’re going to have close to 100 hours of golf on just the CBS television network platform. Think about how big of a commitment that is. Golf is a sport that is in our DNA and will be for a long time.
“That viewer that I mentioned before, they want to watch golf every week and they like the loyalty in return. That’s what they get with the PGA Tour. They like the consistency of the sites they’re used to. They’re looking forward to seeing the South Course again, Pebble Beach next week and Riviera behind it. It’s a part of a way of life for people that are in our little world of golf. We enjoy the stops along the way. That consistency and that loyalty are two very important factors in golf and its place in the media landscape.”
Nantz’s message is clear: golf fans (and Ben An) need to stop sounding the alarms over the NFL’s astronomically high TV ratings. The game of golf, which has always carved its own niche, has a valuable and cherished role in the sports media landscape. And if CBS’s commitment to the sport is any indication, that position isn’t changing any time soon.
