Tony Finau reacts to a putt on his way to winning last month’s Rocket Mortgage Classic.getty images
Almost every interview with an LIV official or LIV player these days contains the same media talking point: The PGA Tour’s viewership is sinking and its audience is dying.
LIV officials have been relentless in knocking down that narrative, using it as a key reason why the Saudi-backed league started this year in the first place. Its officials and players want to grow the sport, don’t they?
When asked about televised golf, legendary producer David Hill, who consults with LIV, simply says, “The audience is dying.”
It’s understandable why LIV continues to use these spots. After all, Golf’s television audience is among the oldest in all of sports.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Instead of running away from the age of its audience, PGA Tour officials, television network executives and advertisers run to it because that older audience is also affluent, educated and serves as business decision makers. Multiple interviews with media and advertising sales executives say the age of the PGA Tour audience is not what makes LIV its albatross.
It’s become clear that the golf business needs to do a better job protecting the PGA Tour’s numbers.
In sports television, younger audiences almost always mean better audiences. Since the dawn of television, network executives have made programming decisions based on the belief that newer shows attract more advertisers and bring in larger audiences.
Sponsors continue to be drawn to older golf fans given their level of wealth, education and business influence.getty images
That’s why LIV events use a shotgun start, compressing a full day’s worth of matches into a four- or five-hour television package. Younger fans are looking for shorter sports.
It’s also why LIV events are organized as mini-music festivals, with rock-and-roll blasting throughout the course as golfers line up their tees. Muted tones are for the elderly. Rock music is for kids.
Several executives who are closely involved with the golf media business disputed that narrative. Yes, network executives want a younger audience. But the golf media has long embraced the advanced age of its viewers.
Ad buyers pointed to Golf Channel’s sales pitch that has turned age — it has the highest average age of any sports network (over 65 for the total day) — into an attribute. That’s because, as Golf Channel’s sales level goes, its audience also has the highest income level and counts more C-suite executives than other channels.
Another point LIV’s people try to make to the house suggests it’s an antidote to declining golf ratings. LIV executives often point to the PGA Tour’s declining numbers as an area where it can build a business.
But an analysis of PGA Tour viewership since 2013-14 shows that audiences on CBS, NBC and the Golf Channel have remained relatively stable.
For example, television audiences for PGA Tour events on these three networks were up 7% from five years ago. During the same time period, the total number of sports hours consumed on television fell by 6%, the sources said.
However, so far this year, the four rounds of events on those three networks have averaged 781,000 viewers, an audience that is down 14% from last season.
The PGA Tour’s television numbers have been flat since the first LIV Golf tournament in early June. CBS kicked off the RBC Canadian Open with a bang, which saw the biggest final-round viewership in 22 years. CBS coverage of the John Deere Classic over the July 4th weekend posted a 25% increase that included the best final round since 2015.
Between those two events, however, was the Travelers Championship that was won by Xander Schauffele, who posted a 36% drop on CBS.
While LIV Golf is generating a lot of headlines so far, it has yet to secure a media deal in the United States and its online numbers have been small.
Take late July, for example, when he held his third tour outside of New York City. His YouTube feed on Sunday had an average concurrent feed of just 74,000. CBS’ same-day coverage of the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic averaged 2.5 million viewers.
LIV Golf is obliged to broadcast its events through YouTube, Facebook and its website.
LIV executives have said they expect to have a US media deal in place by the end of the year. The problem is that most of the major media companies – CBS, ESPN, NBC and Warner Bros. Discovery – have deep relationships with the PGA Tour and are unlikely to do a LIV deal anytime soon.
Fox Sports is an oddity, given that Hill was a top Fox executive for more than two decades and LIV CEO Greg Norman has a personal relationship with Rupert Murdoch. But the sources said there have been no substantive talks about a deal.
Clearly, the networks and advertisers still see the PGA Tour as good business. Just a few years ago CBS, ESPN and NBC signed media deals with the tournament worth close to $700 million a year combined. These agreements last until 2030.
Those deals are structured in such a way that the broadcast networks are not so dependent on the ratings. The PGA Tour sells 75% of the ad sales inventory, leaving the network ad sales groups to sell the remaining 25%.
That means every PGA Tour event is profitable for CBS and NBC. The networks’ economic model when it comes to the PGA Tour is as strong as it’s ever been.
Similarly, advertising sales executives don’t view PGA Tour telecasts through a ratings lens. Sure, they all want Tiger Woods to play in the final set on Sunday, but they buy time on the PGA Tour to reach a unique audience.
“We’ve found that people who watch golf typically don’t watch other sports,” said one ad buyer.
Right now, that’s just the PGA Tour. Two ad buyers said their clients aren’t asking about LIV — at least not yet. They also said they would not recommend LIV now, based on the outcry over human rights abuses by the Saudi government that funds it.
The other key is distribution. LIV won’t garner much interest from advertisers if it continues to stream its events on YouTube and Facebook, ad-buying executives said.
Editor’s note: This story has been revised from the print edition.
