The great divide in men’s professional golf is becoming more entrenched with each passing year.
Despite lacking any viable commercial path forward, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf continues to throw money at a failing product. The rogue golf league keeps writing checks for hundreds of millions of dollars, yet struggles to attract hundreds of thousands of viewers in the United States.
In Year 1 of its brand new TV deal with Fox Sports, LIV continued to get trampled by its PGA Tour competition. Of the 17 rounds to air on the Fox broadcast channel, LIV Golf averaged just 338,000 viewers per telecast last season. Broadcasts on FS1 fared far worse, averaging just 63,000 viewers through the midway point of last season. On the other hand, the PGA Tour averaged 2.66 million viewers per telecast across 26 events on NBC and CBS.
One could’ve reasonably surmised that the additional exposure from the Fox deal would’ve meaningfully helped LIV Golf reach more fans. But its viewership on The CW, the league’s previous broadcast partner, hovered in the 200,000-300,000 viewer range, much more than the FS1 broadcasts and not terribly far off from the Fox windows.
At this point, it’s clear that LIV has been a failure from a commercial standpoint in the United States. And surprisingly, the league’s new CEO Scott O’Neil is willing to admit as much.
“[The U.S. is] the dominant No. 1 TV and sponsorship market in the world, and there’s not a close second,” O’Neil told Sports Business Journal. “And so, the scrutiny we get in the U.S. is well, well-deserved, and we certainly take the challenge.”
To be fair, LIV did start its Fox deal behind the eight-ball. The agreement was announced so close to the beginning of the season, that Fox didn’t have the most favorable television windows to give LIV. That could potentially change as the 2026 season approaches.
LIV is also putting most of its focus on attracting young talent, rather than poaching current PGA Tour players, in a bid to build for the long-term.
Will that lead to more eyeballs? So far, the results aren’t there. But what’s becoming more apparent is that the LIV-PGA split is here to stay, regardless of the former’s ability to draw a television audience.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.