ORLANDO, Fla. -- GOLF CHANNEL concluded its exclusive coverage of The Solheim Cup on Sunday by garnering its highest rating ever (.93) for the final day of the LPGA’s biennial team event, tripling the Sunday rating from 2007 (.27) and far outpacing the Sunday rating in 2005 (.62), the last time the event was played on U.S. soil.
The rating for the six hours of coverage on the third and final day of the international event – which pitted the U.S.A. versus Europe – represented more than 956,000 total viewers, which was the highest for an LPGA telecast on GOLF CHANNEL this year and second only to the U.S. Women’s Open as the highest rating for women’s golf on television so far in 2009 – cable or broadcast.
Friday’s rating (.32) was the second-highest Friday rating on television for a LPGA Tour event this year, and coverage of Saturday’s matches – at 12 hours representing the longest continuous GOLF CHANNEL tournament telecast ever – achieved a rating of .60, topping same-day ratings from both 2005 and 2007.
The coverage marked both the first time GOLF CHANNEL aired the Solheim Cup in HD and the first time the network’s Live From news franchise covered a women’s event.
Web traffic on GolfChannel.com also posted unprecedented gains with page views totaling 3.3 million and nearly 468,000 visits to the site.
The success of The Solheim Cup ratings continues positive viewership trends on the network across all the major golf tours in 2009, as well as for non-tournament programming. GOLF CHANNEL set new marks for round one coverage (World Golf Championship – Accenture Match Play Championship), weekend lead-in coverage (Quail Hollow Championship) and Nationwide Tour coverage (BMW Charity Pro-Am). In addition, 20% more viewers tuned into Live From the Masters and Live from the U.S. Open, ratings highs were also set at Live From THE PLAYERS, Live From the PGA Championship and Golf Central, and The Haney Project was the network’s highest-rated original series premiere.
For more information, contact Dan Higgins, GOLF CHANNEL Public Relations, 407-355-4018 or dhiggins@golfchannel.com
