Can LIV Golf ever pose a real threat to the PGA Tour? Yes, Jay Monahan & Co. have been stressed about how to tackle the Saudi-based promotion. But, it has always been more of a preventive measure than a competitive solution. The fact is, the PGA Tour is far more successful than LIV Golf can ever be.

Yet, for a brief moment, there was a lot of unrest. The Tour had already been suffering from a drop in viewership. 2024 was a shocking season for the broadcasters of the PGA Tour as they saw an absurd change in the usual trend of TV ratings. The start of 2025 was not as promising as Jay Monahan & Co. would have hoped. They received a lot of backlash from the community and the sponsors for the lack of star power and entertainment in the events. But all that changed when Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, and Scottie Scheffler came back on the course.

Scheffler had been absent due to a wrist injury related to the Italian Christmas tradition involving ravioli. Spieth was also recovering from his own problems with the wrist. McIlroy, on the other hand, was busy with his DP World Tour events. However, the PGA Tour’s numbers skyrocketed when the three star players joined the field at the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. The average viewership was steady at 3.3 million while the final day action went up to 4 million.

The same happened at the 2025 Genesis Invitational 3rd round when Scheffler and McIlroy were in the same group. The viewership jumped up as fans from all across the country tuned in to watch the world no. 1 and no. 3 in action together. Replying to Justin Ray’s tweet about the lineup, one fan also commented, “Ratings 📈 This is what I was talking about two days ago”. The phenomena was explained by Sean Zak of the Drop Zone podcast who stated “What delivers solid ratings is if there are PIP guys involved”. He was referring to the highest-ranked golfers on the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program who are just as popular as they are successful.

The analyst stated that the “ratings go up” when influential and famous players like McIlroy, Scheffler, and Spieth are on the field. Josh Carpenter provided further evidence of the impact of the three golfers ranked high on the PIP table as he tweeted, “Golf viewership: CBS draws 3.4M viewers for Ludvig Aberg’s win in the Genesis Invitational, up 5% from 3.2M last year (Hideki). Prior two years: 3.4M (2023) and 2.6M (2022). Sunday’s 3.4M would be the most-watched non major since the 2024 Players (3.5M).”

As you can see, the field that included Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy in featured groups got high TV ratings. And as anyone would expect, LIV Golf took the beating for the PGA Tour’s success.

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy show up to shut up LIV Golf fans

“But LIV has 15K viewers last week!” said someone as they teased the massive number LIV Golf Adelaide pulled after their major breakthrough with Fox Sports. Ironically, the Saudi-based promotion was getting better viewership with their previous broadcast partner, the CW Network.

After navigating through the comment section, one fan added, “The #LIVcult silence is deafening”, pointing out the absence of LIV Golf fans. We also followed suit and couldn’t find any followers of the Saudi-based promotion as well.

One fan provided a brief overview of the entire situation. They commented, “Was a great final round and Sunday back-9 to see Aberg come up clutch on 18. That’s what’s great about the PGA Tour and how LIV will never beat that.” We completely agree with them. As exciting as LIV Golf tries to be, they haven’t been able to deliver compelling storylines as well as the PGA Tour has.

Another targeted their comment towards a specific individual as they stated “@ProGolfCritic will say those numbers are fake news and that the liv app had millions of viewers”. While we would all love a good comeback from LIV Golf, we hope it’s backed by doctored data.

One of the fans didn’t participate in the banter. They instead mentioned, “I can’t explain why, but Rory winning at Pebble got me so pumped to watch golf again. Hadn’t watched a round in 2 years; have gone wall to wall for the Genesis and WMPO.” This further supports Sean Zak’s statement that PIP golfers bring in viewership.

Do you also believe LIV Golf can never catch up to the PGA Tour? Share your views in the comments section.