Two months ago, I went out on a desert trail, rolled around a pile of red rocks, and noticed something strange: I was standing on a golf course.
I could see it in the jagged rock formations above; on the ground, which gently bowed to the divine rump of a dog; and yes, even on the ground, where a soft dusty sand filled the path before me and the soles of my hiking boots beneath me.
I was having a moment familiar to every golfer over a certain age and below a certain mindset: I was daydreaming a golf course into existence.
It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I realized my moment from the middle of the Devil’s Garden Trail in Arches National Park wasn’t just mine. I was scrolling through social media one morning when I saw a photo of something eerily familiar to my dream: a golf hole built into the same landscape and riding the same streaks I had envisioned. The architect was Agustin Pisa, and the hole? Well, it’s also built into Dreamland, as one part of the collection of holes used for Season 2 of TGL.
If you were to mount a defense of what TGL has proven during the early days of Season 2, this is probably what you’d argue: It’s proven how FUN golf can be when golf is not limited to the laws of nature (or national park property boundaries). It has proven that golf can be open to the imagination.
But does the golf fandom agree? This is the most important question TGL faces in phase two (and beyond). And it’s the question that sent me to analyze some key data points from Season 2, which we examine below.
TGL Data Point 1: Opening Night Ratings
The biggest test TGL faced in year 2 was also the first. How would the league perform in its opening broadcast of Season 2? And how would he fare Sunday afternoon against the NFL’s coordinated machine?
The answer was … not bad! The TGL season opener averaged 646,000 viewers nationally on ABC, down significantly from the 2025 season opener (which drew an average of 919,000 viewers on a Tuesday night on ESPN), but still well above the threshold set by similar golf events on network television against the NFL. By comparison, the TGL Season 2 opener drew larger audiences than the PNC Championship (560,000) and the Grant Thornton Invitational (450,000) in similar timeslots.
Context is very important here: TGL’s ratings enjoyed a relatively strong start to 2025 on ESPN, but faltered as the season progressed, with ratings dropping consistently throughout the year. With only one network time, it was critical for the league to show momentum in its opening week of Year 2. The opening week numbers weren’t blockbuster status, but they weren’t enough to raise any significant questions.
TGL Data Point 2: Week Two Ratings
I promise this whole the story won’t be about the ratings, but they’ve had an interesting story to tell in the opening weeks of Season 2.
The second match of the TGL, which featured Rory McIlroy’s first-ever Boston Common win, drew just 354,000 average viewers — this time on ESPN2.
While these numbers represent a nearly 50 percent drop from the start of the season (and They include perhaps the league’s biggest active star in McIlroy), they also weren’t one complete shock to those who pay attention to the data. like SBJJosh Carpenter pointed out that TGL averaged just a hair over 300,000 average viewers across seven games on ESPN2 in Season 1. Week 2’s ratings represent a modest increase from that number, but nothing particularly significant.
Getting food? Broadcast location is critical to TGL. The better the network and plan billing, the better the ratings. And when is the network and schedule worse? Well, that’s how ratings go. Of course, most sports leagues would argue that they are just a broadcast network or primetime billing away from relevance, but TGL seems more sensitive than most leagues to broadcast scheduling and location. For example, the opening matchup of Season 2 is estimated to be significantly larger than LIV’s largest telecast audience (484,000 on FOX), but ESPN2’s ratings show that audience will not travel to other networks, times and days of the week.
Part of this may be due to TGL’s relative newness: Fans enjoy watching the league when they can easily find it, but they haven’t developed the emotional connection to the league to be “sticky” on multiple networks. TGL’s ever-changing schedule, networks and time slots only complicate matters when it comes to building a stable and reliable audience.
TGL data point 3: WTGL
With almost no golf on the calendar (thanks to Sentry’s cancellation), TGL has had the advantage of being the only show in town as the calendar turns to the new year. Perhaps the biggest beneficiary of that stance has been, interestingly, the LPGA, which announced plans to create a Women’s TGL in 2027 earlier this week.
WTGL’s advantage is pretty obvious to those who have spent even a few minutes listening to new LPGA commissioner Craig Kessler. Under Kessler, the LPGA is actively looking for ways to act on “the attention economy” — and an additional, made-for-TV golf league with the advantages of showcasing the players’ personalities fits Kessler’s vision to a T.
The news also presents an interesting upside for TGL: If the league can show it’s able to apply the same first principles to other golf leagues and generate ratings and commercial success, it’s not hard to see how it could be applied to other sports, or applied more deeply to the world of golf. (The opportunity for a mixed-gender league seems too obvious to miss.)
While there is room to disagree about golf need for another league, there is little doubt that more golf is good for everyone, especially when it is viewed by wider, younger and more diverse audiences.
