TV Ratings for LIV Golf’s 2024 Opener Paint an Interesting Picture

On the surface, the television ratings for the final round of LIV Golf’s season-opening tournament look much better than last year. But it’s not quite an apples-to-apples comparison.

Pebble Beach PGA (Saturday), CBS: 1.951m
LIV Golf (Saturday), CW: 168K
LIV Golf (Sunday), CW: 432K https://t.co/I7csAFZ3vK

— Sports TV Ratings (@SportsTVRatings) February 6, 2024

The final round at Mayakoba, Mexico, which featured a playoff between Joaquin Niemann and Sergio Garcia and a strong showing in Jon Rahm’s LIV debut, scored 432,000 viewers on the CW.

The number looks positive when compared to last year’s viewership total, which was 291,000 for the final round at Mayakoba in 2023.

But LIV was handed a gift by Mother Nature when rain canceled the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

A more accurate comparison can be made from Saturday’s coverage of both events. CBS broadcast the third round at Pebble Beach to the tune of 1.951 million viewers. LIV’s Saturday CW coverage drew 168,000 viewers.

The ratio of over 10:1 is actually greater than last year’s final round head-to-head tally. The Honda Classic, a tournament that didn’t have as strong of a field as Pebble Beach did, drew 2.38 million compared to LIV’s 291,000 in February 2023.

TV ratings can always be taken with a grain of salt because of alternative ways to watch, which include the CW app and a pay-per-view option on YouTube, and the coverage wasn’t available on all CW affiliates.

CBS also streams its coverage on the Paramount+ service, which isn’t incorporated into Nielsen numbers either.

Cover Photo via X