The LIV Golf League promises to be “golf but noisier,” but television ratings for the season’s opening game in Mexico last weekend showed few people listening or watching.
The CW’s first live broadcast of the LIV Golf League drew an average of 289,000 viewers and 0.18 household ratings on Saturday and Sunday. Friday’s opening round is open to US audiences only on the CW app and the tournament’s official website.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday’s earnings call, Perry Sook — CEO of Nexstar, the CW’s parent company — said it’s still a good start to the Fund-funded capital circuit. Saudi Arabia’s public investment and preceded it twice. Open Championship Winner Greg Norman.
Sook told reporters that 1.4 million people watched at least a few minutes of the LIV Golf League tournament in Mayakoba, either on The CW broadcast network or on the CW app.
Sook said, “Those numbers exceeded our expectations and most importantly, our affiliates and stations were delighted. “I know that our affiliates and our CW affiliates in the top 10 markets generated three times as much money as the network generated for this first outing, so it It’s selling really well, and, you know, and I think it’s going to continue to grow as we go into the season more and get more involved.”
LIV Golf’s ratings don’t come close to those of the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic, which on Saturday and Sunday averaged about 593,000 viewers on the Golf Channel and about 2 million viewers on NBC.
With the Honda Classic sandwiched between the four biggest PGA Tour events, most of the tournament’s top stars are out of the league. In fact, none of the top 17 players in the world competed in the opening event of the Florida swing tournament, with most focusing on two upcoming designated events, the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Player Championship. The weak surface of the Honda Classic is one of the reasons why LIV Golf decided to hold its first event last week.
At least there was some drama in the Honda Classic: Chris kirk rookie defeated Eric Cole in the playoffs on Sunday to win it for the first time in nearly eight years.
There aren’t nearly as many conspiracies in Mexico: Charles Howell III won the individual title with 4 strokes, and his Crushers GC team won the team title with 9 strokes.
tiger forest‘ returns February 16-19 at Genesis which, after a nearly seven-month hiatus, drew an average of 3.12 million viewers on CBS over the weekend, a 32% increase from the same event in 2022. The final round’s coverage garnered 2.1 ratings and an average of 3.42 million viewers.
This is LIV Golf’s second year of competition and it has signed a number of former PGA Tour stars, including Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Phil Mickelson And Cameron Smith. The inaugural season’s events were broadcast on YouTube, the league’s official website, and the DAZN streaming service.
Brandon Katz, an entertainment strategist at Parrot Analytics, says it’s too early to tell if LIV Golf and The CW will have a successful partnership.
“This is the CW’s first foray into live sports,” Katz told ESPN. “They’re doing it with an embryonic sports league. It’s taken a long time to shape and adjust to audience viewing behaviour. People aren’t used to associating The CW with live sports, so there’s going to be a transition period, a transition period, as they try to get to know their audience and the audience they hope will reach this new big deal. PGA’s numbers at that point in time were a hard one to swallow.”
Katz says that linear sports continues to be the #1 gateway for linear television, and increasingly for streaming services, and sports remain a bigger draw than scripted series and services. other entertainment.
“Clearly, this is an emerging league trying to take on an incumbent and that’s going to take time and money,” Katz said. “We know they have a big financial runway. I think what you want to see is growth in these events in the first year. You’re definitely going to want to see an increase from one league to another. . I think it takes a long time to set up a new league and make sure that the audience knows and the right audience that you want to expand is also aware.”
LIV Golf’s next event is in Tucson, Arizona, March 17-19. It will face the PGA Tour’s Valspar Championship, which is also an unspecified tournament.
