TGL ratings hold steady with holiday start to season

Television ratings for the start of TGL's second season are holding steady with last year's viewership numbers.

The Dec. 28 season opener for the indoor team golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy garnered 646,000 viewers on ABC and the second match on Jan. 2 drew 354,000 viewers, according to Front Office Sports.

The average audience of 500,000 is just under the inaugural season's average of 513,000.

It is worth noting that Dec. 28 was a Sunday and Week 17 of the NFL season, so the afternoon TGL match between Atlanta Drive GC and New York GC went head-to-head with football action.

The Jan. 2 match between McIlroy's Boston Common Golf against Los Angeles GC was the league's first Friday night primetime broadcast. The audience was 17% higher than the ESPN2 average of 303,000 last season.

Eight of the remaining 12 regular-season matches will be on ESPN, with the other four on ESPN2.

The most-watched TGL match remains Woods's debut for Jupiter Links Golf Club last year, which drew just over 1 million viewers on ESPN.