TGL Opening Night Sets High Mark For Viewership and Brand Performance
Last night, the newly formed TGL golf league formed by golf icons Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy with sports executive Mike McCarley teed off for its inaugural event for the 2025 season. Set to bridge the gap between the end of the PGA Tour’s fall schedule and the start of the majors season in the spring, the indoor simulator league features top golf stars in the world implementing custom-built courses, shot clocks, and more innovative rules.
For Match 1 of the season between New York Golf Club and The Bay Golf Club, we used Zoomph broadcast measurement capabilities to measure viewership metrics and brand performance.
Broadcast Viewership
Debuting at 9:00 pm ET on ESPN, the opening night was featured in a jam-packed sports schedule night featuring action across the NBA, NHL, and both men’s and women’s college basketball.
Despite the competition, TGL was the most-viewed live sports event of the evening, averaging 1.20M followers for the event. Early watchers are where the event saw its biggest success, with the event’s viewership peak coming at 9:25 PM when the first hole was being played. In total, the event had 3.2M unique viewers throughout the event.
Most notably, the event’s lead-in was an ACC men’s basketball contest between the Duke Blue Devils and Pitt Panthers. The TGL had a sharp increase following the game, showing a 10% increase from the final 15 minutes of the basketball game, indicating TGL was an appointment viewing event for watchers.
Brand Performance
The golf league’s presenting sponsor this season is SoFi, which led to them being the leading brand beneficiary of the league’s kickoff event.
During the event, SoFi’s brand logo was on screen for over 52 minutes or 41% of the total broadcast time. In total, this allowed SoFi to amass over 292M brand impressions and over $1.81M in brand value. This came from various assets including the TGL logo placements and overlays, the scoreboard, in-venue LED banners, the tee boxes, and more.
Other ads throughout the night included league partners such as Mastercard, FanDuel, KPMG, Best Buy, Genesis, and more, as well as the individual golfer’s apparel partners that are more endemic in the golf industry such as Adidas, Titleist, Srixon, and others.
