The Match 2023 ensured an incredible foursome for a match-play golf event for charity. The Kansas City Chiefs superstars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce faced off against the Golden State Warriors veterans Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in the event to grace fans’ hearts.
The Chiefs duo Mahomes and Kelce defeated the Warriors duo of Curry and Thompson with a final score of 3 & 2. But little did anyone know that TNT continues to see the lowest ratings on its Match series despite featuring such an iconic combo.
Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce fail to draw viewers for charity golf match
This year’s Match event was the first one to have an average audience under a million with a total audience of about only 773k viewers, almost a 50-percent drop-off from the last summer pitting the football legends Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers against Mahomes and Josh Allen.
The Match with Mahomes, Kelce, Curry & Thompson averaged 773k viewers.
That's not a bad number — the NHL Draft had 681k viewers last week on ESPN — but it's a 46% drop YoY & the least-watched version yet.
It feels like the novelty is wearing off.
Let's get the pros back in it! pic.twitter.com/LAzlwlRerT
— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) July 3, 2023
Among the broadcasting networks, Turner Network Television (TNT) was the one to grab the largest audience with 589,000 viewers while HLN placed second with 106,000 audiences and TruTV ranked third with 87,000 viewers, per Sports Media Watch.
Promotion failure in television along with Thursday scheduling
Despite providing viewers with some enjoyable snaps of the legendary football and basketball athletes including light-hearted, and competitive affairs, the charity event’s ratings went to a drastic change but who is to blame for the failure of such a great initiative?
Reportedly, TNT and all other broadcast partners didn’t put much effort into promoting the event and besides that, the Thursday schedule can be another potential reason behind the substantial drop in viewership.
TNT would be facing a huge challenge in deciding whether to revamp “The Match” with new participants or keep the earlier format to team up pro golfers with athletes from different sports as many fans are predicting the decision to feature all no pro golfers in the event as another potential reason the drastic drop in viewership.
Viewers well passed pandemic era lethargy
The most viewed match series was in 2020 amid the Covid pandemic, featuring Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady. The event drew an average of 5.8 million viewers across TNT, TBS, TruTV, and HLN, with a maximum of 6.3 million people tuning in during the peak time from 5:45 to 6 p.m. ET. The four stars were able to raise $20 million for COVID-19 relief through the initiative.
The charity event became the No. 1 program of the day across all television, and even the final rounds of the PGA Championship (CBS) and British Open (NBC) couldn’t resist it from topping the chart. It also surpassed the numbers produced by the then-popular documentary on Michael Jordan.
After eight mostly successful outings, the renowned event’s future remains shaky. Many fans and pundits have already called for pro golfers to come back to the event to continue its legacy in the upcoming days.
