LIV Golf’s TV Ratings Are Trending In A Troubling Direction

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LIV Golf had a bit of trouble generating the interest it was hoping to attract after dropping hundreds of millions of dollars to further its quest of taking on the PGA Tour when it kicked off its inaugural season in 2022.

There were a number of factors you could point to in an attempt to explain the general indifference to the upstart league, including the well-documented controversy concerning the Saudi Arabian money that was used to fund it and an overall product that left plenty to be desired.

It was also impossible to overlook the fact that LIV had failed to find a television partner to broadcast its initial slate of events to the masses.

Earlier this year, it addressed that fairly glaring issue by inking a deal with The CW. It initially looked like that move hadn’t given the organization the bump it was looking for, although LIV attempted to counter that narrative by releasing internal numbers that painted a slightly different picture.

However, it looks like it hasn’t been able to keep that momentum going.

According to Kevin Van Valkenburg of No Laying Up, LIV Golf posted some pretty disappointing ratings for the event that was held in Tuscon last weekend, as Saturday’s round garnered a fairly underwhelming .14 on the Nielsen scale (which is even worse than its aforementioned debut).

It’s worth noting that number is reflective of the percentage of viewers in those markets who opted to tune into LIV on Saturday over all other programming, and the league had its work cut out for it when you consider it was going head-to-head with The Valspar Championship and the March Madness games that were the main attraction on the sporting calendar over the weekend.

I assume it’s only a matter of time until LIV enters the spin zone by releasing another batch of internal numbers, but it’s hard to believe they’ll paint a different picture as far as the downward trend is concerned.