LIV Golf heads to Fox.
According to josh carpenter sports business journalLIV plans to sign a broadcast agreement with FOX Sports for the 2025 season. Fox, which last aired live golf at the 2019 U.S. Open, plans to broadcast all of the league's tournaments on its own network, Fox Sports 1, or a combination of both, although details have not yet been released. do not have. Specific terms of the deal have not been disclosed, and neither party has yet commented on the matter.
For the past two years, LIV Golf events have been broadcast on the CW Network as part of a two-year agreement, but both sides decided not to renew the third-year option. LIV's ratings have struggled on the CW, often drawing less than 200,000 viewers on a weekly basis. Even Jon Rahm vs. Brooks Koepka on The Greenbrier garnered little attention, as just 165,000 viewers watched the showdown between the major champions this past August.
However, LIV was not the only golf league to struggle in viewership ratings in 2024. On the PGA Tour, ratings have declined across the board despite Scottie Scheffler's Tiger Woods-like season. The Masters also suffered a 20 percent viewership decline, likely due to the collapse of professional golf and the rise of various content creators on social media and YouTube.
Nevertheless, LIV Golf built the 2025 season with major network partners in mind. Like the PGA Tour, the schedule is set to end by the end of August so as not to overlap with the fall season of American football.
Fox has numerous properties across the sports lexicon, including NFL, MLB, college football, college basketball and NASCAR, which will allow the network to promote LIV during these events. That would only help boost viewership, something the CW network was unable to provide.
Still, Fox and LIV Golf have held talks before. golf week first reported In September 2022, less than three months after its launch, LIV was nearing a deal with Fox, whose events would be broadcast on Fox Sports 1.
Fox made the most sense for LIV considering NBC, CBS, ABC, and ESPN all have ties to the PGA Tour, PGA of America, and even Augusta National. But now, it's even more so given its ratings struggles on The CW.
Jack Mirko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation's Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
