Despite the recent additions of Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton, LIV Golf is still struggling to attract viewers.
Last Saturday, the final round of LIV Las Vegas drew 297,000 viewers on the CW. The telecast finished 51st for all sports programs that day, on par with the Golf Central pregame show in advance of PGA Tour coverage.
The PGA Tour audience for the third round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open was nearly six times the size, coming in at 1.7 million viewers and ranking No. 3 in sports programming for the day. And those were actually the worst third-round ratings for the event in more than a decade, coming in 32 percent lower than the previous year (2.54M).
Two weeks ago, LIV’s Mayakoba tournament got a significant break when the final round of the PGA Tour’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am wasn’t played due to weather. LIV produced a record 432,000 viewers—but a CBS Sunday re-air of the third round from Pebble Beach brought in three times that audience.
Even when factoring in the inherent advantage of the PGA Tour being on network television, it is pretty clear that the audience is resonating more with the legacy product.
The audience is also resonating with a wide variety of other golf products. Consider that the Good Good Desert Open—a par-3 tournament with influencers—had nearly 100,000 live viewers on YouTube last week. A day later, LIV’s first-round coverage was available on YouTube and had about one-fifth the audience (the Good Good Desert Open has more than one million views total as of this writing).
PGA Tour ratings, while still small compared to other major sports, have held steady in recent years. The tour’s ESPN+ streaming product has made golf the most-watched sport on the platform from January-August the past two years.
LIV has a streaming story to tell also, but the YouTube numbers we see show that very few people are watching.
Point blank: LIV has not shown any meaningful progress in attracting viewers, a problem that has left the circuit without a broadcast partner for early tournament coverage.
Searching for a Second TV Partner
Without real fan interest, LIV’s long-term viability is limited.
LIV has proven it has no problem spending money, and they can continue to throw cash at top players to get them involved. But until fans start to watch consistently, it will be hard to find a TV deal that generates revenue. And until the league generates real TV revenue, it won’t be a functioning business beyond the bottomless pit of cash the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund spends on it.
LIV has a revenue-sharing deal with the CW, which broadcasts the final two rounds of each event. The first round, however, is only aired on YouTube and the CW app—meaning there is no TV revenue coming in for 33 percent of the golf shown.
Officials at LIV have publicly stated they are looking for a second broadcast partner, but we haven’t heard any news to this point.
Last year, LIV made about $3 million in TV revenue. The PGA Tour made over $500 million.
There is another year remaining on the CW contract, and it remains uncertain where LIV goes from here. Potential unity with the PGA Tour is possible, which could change the dynamic completely.
But for now, the biggest reason to be skeptical about LIV as a standalone product is that there is no juice with the product.
Why Aren’t People Watching
It is an inexact science to figure out why more people aren’t watching LIV—but there are a handful of potential answers.
The first is familiarity. The PGA Tour has historic venues and tournaments with storied legacies. Golf fans are used to watching a course like Riviera, host of this week’s Genesis Invitational. They know every hole. They know why the course is so revered. There is a lot of context built into why winning there matters.
We will have to wait to see if the PGA Tour takes any ratings hit from players like Rahm and Hatton leaving. It very well could, especially at a marquee event like the Players Championship where so many top LIV players aren’t competing.
But there is no doubt that much of the PGA Tour’s infrastructure will keep it afloat in the short-term, barring a mass exodus of players.
On the LIV side, fans don’t seem to be identifying with the format. One common complaint is that there are no stakes in a tournament where the rich battle the rich for individual and team titles, the golfers belonging to arbitrary teams. There are also very few, if any, notable courses that get people excited.
For the most part, players didn’t earn their way onto the tour and can’t earn their way off the tour. There are no major invitations at stake or Ryder Cup points in play, for now. And while LIV has stolen several of the most interesting personalities golf has to offer, only two of the top 20 players in the Data Golf rankings are from LIV.
Wrapped into all of the above is that the golf seems substantially less serious while also not being noticeably different from the PGA Tour. It doesn’t veer hard into real drama or the absurd, leaving it caught somewhere in the middle.
The broadcast itself has a lot of positives—it is fast-paced, shows a ton of golf shots, includes interesting graphics, has limited commercial interruption for obvious reasons and is scheduled to include a feature where every shot can be seen live—but some have noted that they don’t like hearing incessant background music coming from on-course hospitality.
It’s also worth pointing out that some viewers won’t even give it a chance because of the controversial source of funding.
The Road Ahead
The next two LIV events are unlikely to see any ratings increase.
The events will be in Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong next month, much of the golf coming while Americans are sleeping.
Maybe a surprise addition will stir some interest, but it’s hard to imagine those ratings getting better. This is especially the case because LIV has scheduled several of their events at the same time as the PGA Tour’s best tournaments.
LIV Hong Kong goes up against the Arnold Palmer Invitational. LIV Houston will face the Memorial Tournament. LIV Nashville counters the Travelers Championship. LIV Andalucia is on at the same time as the Genesis Scottish Open. And LIV Greenbrier is competing against the FedEx St. Jude.
The best golfers in the world will be on the PGA Tour those weeks.
If you are a LIV fan looking for positives, the Australia stop is coming up in April and will be played during the Zurich Classic, which is one of the PGA Tour’s worst events. Australia was a huge success a year ago, especially in person. The July event in Spain could also draw large crowds.
But for the time being, the numbers say golf fans are not flocking to LIV.
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