Why this is Liv Golf’s most important weekend yet

Formerly the next week, when everyone returns to Azaleas, Liv Golf will have something to cheer. The topic will have no connection to tens of its players following a green jacket in Mastersbut on the contrary it will concentrate around youGolf fans.

Liv Golf will have his best ratings on TV in his four -year history. But what does that mean?

This weekend marks Livi’s annual internal arrival – in Miami’s Trump Golf course – after playing four shifts across the globe, fighting with difficult television windows and competing with PGA Tour’s signature events. These barriers will be eliminated this weekend while Liv ends on Sunday in the Prime Minister of Golf view, and against Valero Texas Open, a Middle PGA Tour event that presents only two from the World Top 10. It will broadcast a local tournament on a television channel on the network, FOX, stretching it with TV status.

In a way, the Liv product will be unclear (from its self-sacrificed limitations) and free to shine-like a runner who had previously run with foot weight. But just because you remove weights does not make you as fast as your competitors. This is what we are decided to discover this weekend. Can Liv run as fast as PGA Tour?

The answer, up to this point, has been a shock. The general interest in the league has fallen, to the point that two of its biggest stars, Brooks Koepka and Bryson Dechambeau, did not offer much specificity this week when they were asked about the state of the league and its popularity in the year 4.

Koepka said that “we would all hope it would have been a little further, and that is no secret.” Dechambeau emphasized the growing interest of the sponsor before violating the question at the new CEO Scott O’neill, who himself, in a special session with reporters, admitted that ratings from the early events of the early season were “frustrating”. By talking to reporters This week in Miami, O’Neill played the importance of this week.

“Is it important this weekend? Of course it is,” he said. “This is important in the US for broadcasting in the US, and is in Fox, and that’s an exciting opportunity. I have no problem being judged. Judge me this week, for sure.”

The golf world absolutely will. And there will be a large determined data against which it will do so. Almost every weekend a PGA Tour event ends on Sundays in the late afternoon until the early evening. Without any weather delay, Liv will crown a champion shortly after 4 pm, approximately an hour before the PGA Tour does the same in San Antonio. That TV window regularly produces a number in the 1.7 to 3.1 million interval of medium viewers when broadcasting on CBS or NBC.

So what vision number would be considered a success for the event in Miami? I asked my colleague James Colgan, who writes a weekly bulletin for all the golf media (and who wrote about the terminology of evaluations here). Colgan said Fox regularly attracts 4 million for its NASCAR telekastrat on the same slot in which the Liv tournament will be broadcast this weekend. If liv can’t hand 1 million medium viewers to this window, Colgan said, would suggest – though a week is a small set of samples – that leagues will fight to reach viewers many even with the advantage of a national network partner.

While 1 million groups of eyes would still emerge from the average PGA Tour performance in the middle of the season, it would be the biggest rating of LIV so far and perhaps an indication of what would come to its inner events later this summer. In contrast, if much less viewers were tuned, this could also be an indicator of the durability of the league.

This weekend, a photograph will start to take shape. The PGA Tour has its lowest wave field per week, led by a pair of international players in the 10 pre-Ludvig Aberg and Hideki Matsuyama. The largest creator of ratings in the field is quite below the list, no. 66 in the world, Jordan Spieth. Prohibition of a victory or difference in quarrels, Valero Texas Open It is likely to be lowered in the 1.7 to 2 million medium viewers. Last year, when Akshay Bhatia won, Sunday’s broadcast won about 1.9 million.

It can be easy to roll over the eyes when these numbers circulate, but they are an important indicator of the health and popularity of the pro game. Future television arrangements (with Fox, for Liv, or with NBC and CBS, for PGA Tour) are dictated by the overall value of the product now And however, many promises of product in the future can be made. While just a few months ago it seemed as if the two warring leagues were intended for a form of union, the recent negotiations at the White House to help during the process seemed to have not done so. O’Neill reinforced the feeling of a cramp when he told reporters this week that he did not see a deal between Saudi Pif (his league supporters) and PGA Tour as needed.

On the contrary, the future of the pro game may be more special, in which golf fans will vote with their remote controls on TV. In that case, if liv is as popular as its biggest supporters believe it is, it MUST Be able to collect a considerable number when you go against a smaller event with PGA Tour ticket. According to Datagolf, Liv Miami will have four of the 15 leading players in the world, all competing in a well-known course. In general, the combination of host course intrigue, a high -level field and a Sunday’s EST network television window has given enough viewing to make the pro for men a very trading entity.

Now that liv has all this, as O’Neill clearly said – now It’s time to judge.

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