NBA and NHL season ends also drew big audiences while LIV Golf is in the tank
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Bulls of the week
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The week began with Rory McIlroy celebrating his second consecutive championship title at the Masters, the first of the majors on the men’s pro golf calendar. His second green jacket was won in style in a dramatic finish that delivered an average American television audience of more than 14 million viewers on CBS. It made McIlroy just the ninth golfer to win six majors and 30 PGA Tour tournaments in a career. It also consolidated a remarkable turnaround for the pride of Northern Ireland, who had become synonymous with failure at the only major that is played at the same golf course year-in, year-out.
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After going winless in his first 16 Masters dating back to 2009, he has now won two-straight and earned more than US$8.7 million at Augusta in 2025 ($4.2 million) and 2026 ($4.5 million). That’s more than double his earnings from his first 16 disappointments, including $1.62 million in 2022, the year he finished runner-up to Scottie Scheffler despite going eight under in the final round. It’s a safe bet to suggest that 2025 and 2026 have eased the painful memory of the collapse in his third Masters appearance in 2011, when he blew a four-shot lead after three rounds.
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Sunrise
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The rest of the week has been largely owned by the NBA — with its play-in tournament dominating sports television and radio since Tuesday — and the NHL, which closed out its regular season with plenty of scoreboard watching and playoff implications Thursday night. The two leagues will now go shoulder to shoulder for their playoffs, with both beginning on Saturday. Up until the early 2000s, the NBA typically ran two weeks later than the NHL. Yet with several instances of common ownership, shared arenas and a couple of overlapping broadcast partners, they have now adopted the cross-marketing that comes with playing their biggest games over the same two-month period. And that helps fill sports bars and restaurants with as many as eight games per evening.
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Bears of the week
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It’s been another tough week for the injury-riddled Toronto Blue Jays, who are a disappointing 7-11 going into a weekend series in Phoenix against the Arizona Diamondbacks. That’s a slow start for the team that created big expectations for this year after reaching game 7 of the World Series Nov. 1 against the now two-time defending champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers. LA, by the way, has the best record in baseball at 14-4. Also playing in a bear market — at least so far — are the Seattle Mariners, 8-12 to start off their 50th season as the Toronto Blue Jays’ 1977 expansion cousins.
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It also hasn’t been much fun this past week for Rick Bowness and the Columbus Blue Jackets, losers of their last six games at home and going 2-8-1 in their stretch run to miss the playoffs for the sixth straight season.
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Yet no one has had a worse week than the LIV Golf Tour, which appears to be on the verge of officially losing its funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF). Money has never been an issue for LIV given the deep pockets and seemingly limitless cash flow from the PIF. Yet as proof to the saying that money can’t buy you everything, Saudi energy money couldn’t buy the television ratings or attendance that was required to truly give the PGA Tour a run for the money. It had money — at least until now — and a handful of high-profile renegades from the PGA Tour, but lacked the intangibles of history and tradition.
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Sport business commentator and marketing executive Tom Mayenknecht is a principal in EMBLEMATICA and the host of The Sport Market on Sportsnet 650 and the Sportsnet Radio Network.
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