The Solheim Cup’s TV ratings defy easy explanation

“I don’t know what the f— we’re doing so wrong.” Mel Reid, a Solheim Cup assistant captain, said that in a recent interview with Golf Channel’s Kira K. Dixon. She was addressing a troubling trend: the 2026 Solheim Cup’s U.S. television ratings were nearly half those of the previous European edition, held just three years earlier.

Reid’s comments, made on the pair’s Quiet Please! podcast, highlighted a broader issue facing the Solheim Cup and women’s golf: without television support, the sport cannot keep growing its revenues, and without greater revenues, it cannot develop at the rate its leaders would like.

“[The Solheim Cup] is literally one of the greatest sporting events that we get to witness all year, men or women,” Reid said. “This is where I get frustrated because I do feel like the players are delivering the entertainment, the players are delivering everything that we’re asking them for.”

For years, critics of the LPGA argued that women’s golf had poor television viewership because it lacked entertainment value. The tournaments and players, the argument went, simply were not interesting enough to make fans watch. Without viewers, broadcasters had little financial incentive to put tournaments on television. Fewer hours on TV meant less money from broadcast partners; less broadcast money meant less sponsorship revenue; and that meant smaller player purses, marketing budgets and fan-outreach programs — ultimately making women’s golf smaller.

The argument was logical, but the Solheim Cup appeared to disprove it. The event was entertaining. Its players — particularly Carlota Ciganda and Jennifer Kupcho — were thrilling. For several days, the tournament generated drama and intrigue across the golf world. Yet the TV ratings were not merely poor; they were moving sharply in the wrong direction.

“Even our budgets, what we can do with the team room, what we can do with the locker room, and the golf course, it’s wild to me that it is such a significant change [from the men],” Reid said. “Why is that? Why are we not closing in that gap for a product that is, in my opinion, sensational?”

There are no easy answers to Reid’s questions, although weaknesses in the Solheim Cup’s effort to attract a major American sports audience are not difficult to identify. First, the event was scheduled for the first Sunday of the NFL season and the second Saturday of the college-football season — a weekend bordering on a national holiday for large portions of the U.S. sports audience. Second, the Cup’s marketing was microscopic compared with the planet-sized scope of the Ryder Cup. Third, the U.S. team was light on superstar talent outside Nelly Korda and equally light on the major storylines and controversies that keep a sport’s conversation going.

It probably did not help that the Solheim Cup abandoned its previous cadence in 2023. That year, it was held one week before the men’s Ryder Cup in Rome, creating easy synergies between the men’s and women’s games and reaching fans when team golf was at the forefront of their attention.

Still, the Cup was everything its critics had said it could not be. It was fascinating and tense. Both sides leaned into the trash talk, fist pumps and spine-tingling moments. The good guys were pesky underdogs, while the bad guys were an established dynasty. The ingredients for a compelling television story were all there. And yet it simply did not work.

For Reid and the rest of women’s golf, the question will linger well into the quiet portion of the golf calendar. By the time the Solheim Cup returns to Europe in 2030, the sport would be wise to have an answer.

“The fact that’s what the viewership was for the f—ing Solheim Cup is actually really heartbreaking to me,” Reid said. “I feel like we’re going backwards again.”

Based on reporting by GOLF.com’s James Colgan.