Reinhold Matay-Imagn Images
LIV Golf headed into its fourth season in the midst of its perpetually unsuccessful quest to prove it can go toe-to-toe with the PGA Tour. It has not managed to make much progress on that front over the past few months, and nothing sums up its ongoing struggles like the fact that its most recent event couldn’t even come close to matching the ratings of a replay of the Zurich Classic.
At this point, there’s not much to say about LIV Golf that hasn’t already been said countless times in the equally countless number of stories chronicling the trials and tribulations of the Saudi-funded money pit that has managed to attract some of the best golfers on the planet but has barely anything to show for it four years after its inception.
Prior to the start of the current season, the organization took a big step in the right direction after inking a broadcast deal with Fox Sports, which was a major upgrade from the previous arrangement with The CW that hadn’t done much to move the needle as far as its ability to drum up interest (and eyeballs) was concerned.
However, there have still been some pretty lackluster returns as far as viewership is concerned based on the average number of people in the United States who tuned in for the final round of the first five events of the 2025 campaign:
- Riyadh: 40,200
- Adelaide: 249,000
- Hong Kong: 29,000
- Singapore: 34,000
- Miami: 484,000
There may be a couple of bright spots there, but the higher numbers still pale in comparison to what even the most run-of-the-mill PGA Tour tournament is routinely able to generate, and the latter’s dominance was once again highlighted thanks to what transpired over the weekend.
LIV headed to Club de Golf Chapultepec in Mexico City the same week the PGA Tour descended upon TPC Louisiana in New Orleans for the Zurich Classic. The former went off without a hitch while being aired on FS1, but the latter hit a snag due to a weather delay linked to a power outage during the final round on Sunday that lasted for more than two hours and led to CBS replaying coverage from the 2024 Zurich Classic until play resumed.
You might think that presented a solid opportunity for LIV, but as Awful Announcing notes, it wasn’t able to take advantage; the Mexico City event averaged 110,000 viewers, while the Zurich Classic ended up with 1.63 million viewers despite the technical difficulties.
The PGA Tour obviously had an edge with the Zurich Classic being broadcast over the air as opposed to on cable, but the fact that LIV Golf couldn’t even sniff that total does not bode well for a league that has gotten an impressively unimpressive return on its massive investment.