Very few media members have come to the defense of LIV Golf as the Saudi-backed league continues to attempt to carve out a role in the sport’s ecosystem. But while FS1 host Colin Cowherd acknowledges LIV Golf’s current faults, he also sees a tremendous value in the league as an in-person entertainment draw.
As a television product, LIV Golf, which airs on the Fox family of networks, continues to come nowhere close to resembling a real competitor for the PGA Tour in terms of TV viewership. However, when you look at the in-person audience that LIV Golf events draw, the circuit does show its value.
In particular, Sunday’s final round of the LIV Golf Indianapolis tournament saw 60,000 fans in attendance at The Club at Chatham Hills, a new record for the most-attended round of a LIV Golf tournament inside the United States.
This prompted Cowherd, who spoke highly of LIV Golf while at LIV Chicago earlier this month, to further speak to how LIV thrives as an in-person event, while acknowledging that he “isn’t sure whether it will ever work” as a television product.
“Did you see the attendance in Indianapolis?” said Cowherd on the latest episode of his podcast while joined by John Middlekauff. “They sold 50,000 seats. So that is almost double (LIV) Chicago. I was talking to an executive at Fox and I said, ‘I don’t know if it works on TV. I don’t know.’ Some stuff does, some stuff doesn’t. Boxing is captivating in person. It doesn’t necessarily work on network television, for whatever reason. Hockey doesn’t work on TV, it’s unbelievable in person.
“But, I mean, to sell 50,000 seats… And the merchandise they sell, as you and I saw, crushes. Literally, they doubled the tickets sold in a smaller area. I think they are onto something with this Midwest swing. It feels like the PGA (Tour) has gone very coastal. I think they have found a little bit of a niche.”
Maybe Cowherd is onto something with his comments about LIV Golf “finding their niche” in the Midwest. At the very least, LIV Golf is quite happy with how the LIV Indianapolis event went, already confirming they will return to The Club at Chatham Hills in August of 2026.
Either way, unless LIV finds a way to drastically increase its reach to a television audience, the in-person attendance will only do so much for the league’s sustainability.
About Reice Shipley
Reice Shipley is a staff writer for Comeback Media that graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Sports Media. He previously worked at Barrett Sports Media and is a fan of all things Syracuse sports.