LIV Golf embarrassed as Honda Classic draws in eight times number of TV viewers
LIV Golf was put to shame by arch-rivals the PGA Tour after the latter’s tournament drew in far higher TV numbers.
The Saudi-backed circuit made their small-screen debut on the CW Network this past weekend for its season opener in Mayakoba, Mexico. An average of 286,000 and 291,000 viewers tuned in on Saturday and Sunday respectively to watch Phil Mickelson and co in action.
In stark contrast, the PGA Tour, who held the Honda Classic over the same weekend, brought in 1.61 million viewers Saturday and 2.38 million on Sunday on channel NBC. Charles Howell III went on to claim his first LIV Golf title with a stunning eight-under-par 63 in the final round.
Howell, 43, finished on 16 under, four shots clear of runner-up Peter Uihlein with Sunday's bogey-free final round and claimed a staggering £3.33m prize, plus a quarter of the £2.48m prize for winning the team event with Crushers GC. But more viewers preferred to watch Chris Kirk triumph in a play-off decider at the PGA National Members Club in Florida, where he claimed his first PGA Tour victory in almost eight years.
His reward was a £1.2million grand prize, the most lucrative win of Kirk's career to date, and having fallen as low as 303rd in the rankings he's now up to 32nd on the OWGR leaderboard. In the time since he had last been crowned a champion on golf 's biggest circuit, the 37-year-old had opened up on his battles with alcohol and depression, only to come back sober and ready to compete at the highest level.
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And almost four years after admitting he had a substance abuse problem, 'Captain Kirk' opened up about just how close he came to the brink amid his issues with alcohol. “I owe everything that I have in my entire life to my sobriety,” he told reporters following a long-awaited win.
“I wouldn’t be doing this for a living anymore. I probably wouldn’t have the family that I have currently anymore. I came really close to losing everything that I cared about. For that to have happened and worked out for me, obviously there was some decisions that I made, but mostly the grace of God and a lot of other people that really helped me along the way.
Less than 300,000 people watched the opening event of LIV's 2023 season on the USA's CW Network (AP)“It’s something that’s constantly on my mind, so it’s pretty easy for me to see that winning the Honda Classic is kind of a bonus when literally every good thing I have in my life I owe to that.”
To further rub salt into the wounds for LIV, it transpired that 'World's Funniest Animals', another CW programme, was deemed the better weekend entertainment than the golf broadcast.
Golf Digest's Joel Beall provided the damning context behind the ratings, as the comedic animal show "outdrew" LIV, who are desperate to establish a global audience and were delighted to finally secure a TV deal in January.
But after drawing a rather underwhelming audience for their season curtain-raiser, there is plenty of work to do for Greg Norman and co moving forward.
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