Turner Sports sank a hole-in-one with viewers with its The Match: Champions for Charity event over the Memorial Day weekend to raise money for COVID-19 relief.
The Match paired golf greats Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson with legendary NFL quarterbacks Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. NBA on TNT analyst Charles Barkley crossed over from the basketball court to the golf course to provide commentary. That combination drew in an average of 5.8 million viewers across the Turner Sports family of networks, peaking at 6.3 million viewers between 5:45 and 6 p.m. on Sunday. CNN International also broadcast the event to a worldwide audience and it found success on social media platforms, as well.
Woods and Manning won the event, but it was Brady who turned in the most memorable moments. He sank a birdie from 150 yards away on the Par 5 seventh hole, but also split his pants while bending down to retrieve a ball. Brady later joked about the incident on Twitter saying, “The pants wanted in on social distancing I guess.”
The real winner is Turner Sports, however. Not only did The Match raise 20 million dollars, double the estimated amount, TNT claims that the average of 5.8 million viewers makes The Match the most watched cable golf event in television history. By comparison, Woods and Mickelson held a similar pay-per-view event in 2018, but it was hampered by technical glitches, so exact viewership numbers for that event are not known.
The Match continues the trend of high viewership numbers for sports-related programing amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Last Dance, ESPN’s recent documentary on Michael Jordan, averaged 5.6 million views while the NFL Draft drew 55 million viewers over three days.
The Match also became the topic of conversation across social media platforms, as well. According to Turner Sports, the event was the number #1 trending topic on Twitter. In all, 172 million social media impressions were created and The Bleacher Report mobile app, which is owned by Turner, set a record for the most comments made.