The final round of golf’s 2024 US Open has been among the most watched editions of the competition in the last decade.
Broadcast on national broadcaster NBC, as well as its Peacock OTT streaming service, the competition's final round drew an average of 5.9 million viewers across its multiple platforms.
The fraught finale to one of the sport’s four majors, which saw Bryson DeChambeau score a one-shot victory over Rory McIlroy, peaked with 11.4 million viewers, the highest of any US Open since 2015.
Hosted at the notoriously difficult Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, the event was the most-watched of the seven East Coast editions of the US Open since 2013, but overall viewership (-6%) and ratings (-11%) fell on last year’s US Open, which took place at California’s Los Angeles Country Club.
On Peacock in particular, however, the 2024 US Open was the service’s most-streamed golf event ever, and coverage of the final round was its most streamed telecast, with overall streaming viewership up 17% on 2023.
Peacock is still a loss maker for NBCUniversal, although that figure has narrowed year-on-year thanks to growing subscribers.
In the first quarter (Q1) of 2024 the streamer gained 3 million new subscribers that saw losses fall on Q1 of 2023 from $704 million to $639 million.
Speaking to analysts, Comcast president Mike Cavanagh stressed that despite another year of nine-figure losses for the streamer, the outlook is not a negative one, stating that its mix of sports content and broad entertainment is “interplaying well with each other”, highlighted by record streaming viewership on its NFL American football playoff broadcasts in January.
Although Cavanagh stated at the time that Q2 will likely be a leaner month due to the lack of sports occurring over the three months (US Open notwithstanding), NBC’s exclusive US rights to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (which will begin in July) are expected to drive growth once again through the third quarter of the year.
