Open Championship: Final Round Reaches 4.3 Million Viewers in the U.S.

NBC Sports’ broadcast of the final round of the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale drew an average of 4.3 million viewers. It marks the largest final-round audience for a major tournament on U.S. television since 2022. The confirmed peak viewership of 6.1 million viewers occurred between 1:15 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. local time (ET)—the time frame during which Ryan Fox overtook Cameron Young and pulled ahead in the final stretch.

Click here for the final leaderboard of the 2026 Open Championship.

What the number means for the Open Championship

The average of 4.3 million is significant for NBC Sports in two ways. It confirms that the Open Championship can generate competitive major-level viewership on U.S. television—and it did so in a year when a first-time major winner, with pre-tournament odds of 200-to-1, sparked a true Sunday afternoon must-watch event. The open question for broadcasters and the R&A alike is whether Fox’s victory was a one-time spike or reflects a broader trend.

The Background: NBC, the R&A, and Structural Disadvantages

NBC Sports holds the U.S. television rights to the Open Championship as part of an ongoing partnership with the R&A. The final round of a major is the network’s highest-reaching broadcast slot, and Open viewership figures have recently been subject to the same structural constraints as the rest of golf television: uncertainty about the availability of top players following the LIV split, as well as competition from the summer sports schedule. The 2022 final round—the record-setter to date—was the Open at St. Andrews, where Cameron Smith won, while Rory McIlroy was in contention through the final nine holes and finished second.

See here how much prize money was awarded at the 2026 Open Championship.

A comparison of the figures

• Masters: 13.9 million
• PGA Championship: 5.7 million
• U.S. Open: 5.5 million
• Open Championship: 4.3 million

In addition, NBC averaged 3.7 million viewers during the third round—the most-watched third round of the Open since 2018 and a 16 percent increase over the previous year. The Open’s position at the lower end of the major championship viewership rankings is due to structural factors: It airs on Sunday afternoon without the primetime advantage and in a market where the brand’s domestic strength is weaker than that of the Masters or the U.S. Open.

What Drove Viewership

Ryan Fox’s victory, at pre-tournament odds of 200:1, created an unusually tight leaderboard in the final hour. Fox entered the final round as the 54-hole leader but faced challenges from Cameron Young (USA, second) and Sam Burns (USA)—meaning two Americans remained in the title race right up to the final stretch, a scenario that best suits U.S. viewership.

Outlook: What the viewership figures mean for the rights negotiations

In the ongoing rights negotiations with the R&A, NBC Sports can cite a verified final-round reach of 4.3 million—a figure that surpasses the reach of the past two Open final rounds on U.S. television. Whether this year’s performance is due more to Fox’s narrative than to a structural trend will only become clear in 2027. At the same time, the result comes at a time when partnership agreements between the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the Asian Tour are being restructured, effective in 2027, to determine which broadcast windows will carry which tournaments.