Liv Golf is on the strings

The figures are for the big television beginnings of the broadcast of Liv Golf and they are not good.

The last round on Sunday, broadcast on Fox and featuring some of the biggest names of Liv in the hunt – Sergio Garcia, Bryson Dechambeau and Phil Mickelson – collected an audience of only 484,000 viewers. In comparison, the Valero Open of the PGA Tour – which had none of the big names in the tour in The Hunt – attracted an audience of 1.746 million.

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This is a disturbing new for the escaped tour. At this stage, LIV could blame the anemic notes (sometimes in tens of thousands) on low visibility (broadcast on the CW) or annoying air times. Who is standing to watch a live tournament from Singapore?

Liv did not have such an excuse this weekend. The tournament took place in Miami, broadcast on Fox and played in front of a tour event where most of its best players jumped in preparation Masters this week.

Admittedly, Liv has a wider geographical objective than the PGA Tour. Eight of his 14 events are played outside the United States. So yes, winning a general American public is not the end that it is for the PGA Tour. But still … 484,000 for a Sunday afternoon event organized by the President of the United States?

If, indeed, it was a makeup weekend So many people billedThen Liv broke out. And that matters a lot.

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Two years ago, when Liv and the PGA Tour announced a partnership agreement, the belief was the Saudi tour had made the American tour on the strings. He had deeper – much deeper – pockets – and was still poaching the best players on the tour. He had already Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Dustin Johnson, and would soon add Jon Rahm – player No. 3 of the world at the time – and Bryson Dechambeau – attraction n ° 1 of sport, outside of Tiger Woods.

To stay afloat, the PGA Tour had to capitulate and put an end to war with Liv, at least the thought went. Week after week, month after month and now year after year, the question came: when would the two visits reach a regulation? Week after week, month after month and now year after year, there was no news. There have been meetings, empty platitudes on progress and not much else. However, it was always When Would a regulation be reached.

Meanwhile, the tour has died and obtained billions of private supports. He also sat and waited for Liv to show signs of life.

Now we are here in 2025, five events in its fourth season, still waiting for Liv to show signs of life.

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Barely a week ago, it was reported that the SAUDI Public Investment Fund, the donor of the LIVE, had approached the PGA Tour with an offer for an investment of $ 1.5 billion in exchange for a guarantee that the Liv would continue and the supervisor of the Yasir al-Rumayyan installation in the Tour board of directors. The PGA Tour rejected the offer.

Now, while the best of the two tours go up on Augusta National for one of the unified golf events, talking about reunification has gone from “when” to a barely audible “if”.

“As I can say and you can say, this does not happen soon,” Rahm told Augusta National on Tuesday.

And with the clock that turns on these giant contracts that Liv used to attract these big names, like Rahm, why would the PGA Tour act now?

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Until now, Liv's strategy to buy eye globes has not changed. It turns out that it takes more than a few big names so that people care about something. If it was not deeply obvious before this weekend, it is now.

And now Liv Golf is that of the strings.