Saturday Night Live took a hilarious turn on how the PGA Tours business would go down in 2013 after Tiger Woods announced his then-‘indefinite break.’ The 82-time PGA Tour winner has been a needle mover of golf, but that year controversial aspects of his life were unsurfaced, and the 48-year-old also went through another injury. As has been the case, the PGA Tour banks had many advantages from Woods’s presence, but his break was expected to affect the ratings and eventually, the revenue.
10 years ago, SNL made fun of that aspect of the PGA Tour as they showed former PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem in the skit addressing Woods’s long hiatus and justifying how it would not affect the Tour. The commissioner said, “We’re going to be fine. People don’t just watch golf because of him [Woods]. We’ve still got plenty of other superstars.” But just as the press conference continued, a cast member started removing sponsors from the background, implying what Woods’s absence would have meant—that is, sponsors baking out of the PGA Tour. But why is a 15-year-old skit resurfacing again? Well, that’s because SNL has made another skit on the PGA Tour.
But this time it does not involve Woods but a spoof showing a PGA Tour event, or the charity event called in the video, ‘The Oat Mont Classic’ with Mikey Day and Heidi Gardner playing the anchors, respectively, and comedian Nate Bargatze portraying a PGA Tour pro-Brady Knoll.
The skit shows Knoll hitting the first tee shot but killing a bird, then destroying an eagle’s nest, throwing his club in the lake due to frustration but killing a snapping turtle, and after draining a birdie, unintentionally taking down a chipmunk. No animals were harmed during the skit though. The funny skit surprised the golf world, as they loved the spin-off of the PGA Tour events.
The spoof showed how usually an anticlimactic golf event was anything but a mixture of various amusing events. It didn’t hint anything about Woods’ absence from the PGA Tour in the 2024 season, but it did bring back the implication of how important the 15-time major champion still is for the PGA Tour’s success and how the Tour has taken many steps to have him involved with the game more than ever.
PGA Tour’s falling ratings and their attempt to salvage it
In the 2024 season, the PGA Tour was not facing just LIV Golf as its arch-rival but also the dipping TV ratings. Since the start of the 2024 season, the Jay Monahan-led circuit has suffered a massive loss of audience. The WM Phoenix Open saw a drop of 35% in ratings, the Arnold Palmer Invitational failed to gather more fans, and the rating declined by 30% as 2.291 million tuned in for it from 2023’s 3.259 million.
Overall, the PGA Tour’s events rating was declining by 20% on average, as Rory McIlroy revealed, which is a huge downfall the league didn’t expect in 2024. On the other hand, when Tiger Woods made his 2024 debut at the Genesis Invitational, there was a 141% increase in the viewership of the opening round from 2023. But as he withdrew from the event, the TV rating for the final round dropped by 5%. This showed that the fans were tuning in for the 15-time major winner.
So, to capitalize on that front and get the PGA Tour out of the low viewership dungeon, the Tour gave Woods a special lifetime exemption in all of the signature events starting in 2025. The decision would now assure that the Woods fans will surely tune in to watch the elevated events, and hopefully, the viewership would improve. The exemption was given to honor the 82-time PGA Tour winner and all he had done for the game of golf, but it also benefits the PGA Tour.
The question is if Woods will tee up at all the events, as he played only five this year, and help the Tour regain its audience base. It remains to be seen.
