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Tony Finau responded when he came close to winning last month’s Rockets Mortgage Classic.Getty Images
Every interview with an LIV official or LIV player these days brings up the same media talking point: The PGA Tour’s audience is sinking, and its audience is dying.
LIV officials have worked tirelessly to counter this narrative, citing it as the main reason the Saudi-backed league took off in the first place this year. The officials and the players want to promote the sport, don’t they?
When asked about TV golf, celebrity producer David Hill, who consults with LIV, simply said, “The audience is dying.”
It’s understandable why LIV continues to use these talking points. Golf’s TV audience is one of the oldest of all sports.
But this does not tell the whole story.
PGA Tour officials, TV network executives and advertisers run toward the audience’s age rather than shying away from it because that older audience is wealthier, more educated and serves as business decision makers. Numerous interviews with media and advertising sales executives say the age of the PGA Tour audience is not the Albatross LIV.
It’s become clear that the golf business needs to do a better job of defending the PGA Tour’s numbers.
In sports television, a younger audience almost always means a better audience. Since the dawn of television, network executives have made programming decisions that youth-skewing shows will attract more advertisers and bring in more viewers.
Sponsors continue to be drawn to golf’s seniors because of their wealth, education and business influence.Getty Images
That’s why LIV events use a shooting start to squeeze a full day’s worth of matches into a four- or five-hour TV package. Young fans want shorter sports.
That’s why LIV events are structured like mini music festivals, where golfers line up to rock and roll. Hidden voices are for old people. Rock music is for kids.
Many executives closely involved with the golf media business have pushed back against that narrative. Yes, network managers want a younger audience. But the golf media has long embraced the advanced age of its audience.
Ad buyers cited sales of the aging Golf Channel — which has the highest average age of any sports network (over 65 for the entire day) — feature. This is because, as the Golf Channel’s sales volume goes, its audience has a higher income level and counts more C-suite level executives than other channels.
Another point LIV suggests is that people trying to hit home is the antidote to golf’s crippling standards. LIV executives often point to reduced PGA Tour numbers as an area where they can build a business.
But an analysis of PGA Tour viewership since 2013-14 shows that audiences on CBS, NBC and Golf Channel have remained relatively stable.
For example, TV audiences for PGA Tour events across those three networks are up 7% from five years ago. In the same period, total sports hours on television fell by 6%, sources said.
So far this year, however, all four rounds of events on those three networks have averaged 781,000 viewers, down 14% from last season.
PGA Tour television numbers have been inconsistent since LIV Golf’s inaugural tournament in early June. CBS kicked off the RBC Canadian Open with a bang, posting its largest final-round viewership in 22 years. CBS’ coverage of the John Deere Classic posted a 25% jump over the July 4 weekend, including its best final round since 2015.
Sandwiched between those two events, however, was the Travelers Championship won by Xander Schauffele, which drew 36% on CBS.
While LIV Golf is generating a lot of headlines so far, it has yet to secure a media deal in the United States and its online numbers are very small.
Take, for example, the end of July, when he held his third race outside of New York City. Sunday’s YouTube feed averaged just 74,000 at one time. On the same day, CBS coverage of the PGA Tour’s Rocket Mortgage Classic drew 2.5 million viewers.
LIV Golf has been forced to broadcast the events on YouTube, Facebook and its own website.
LIV executives said they expect a U.S. media deal to be in place by the end of the year. The problem is that most of the big media companies — CBS, ESPN, NBC and Warner Bros. Discovery — have deep ties to the PGA Tour and are likely to cut the LIV deal soon.
Fox Sports stands out because Hill has been a top Fox executive for more than two decades and LIV CEO Greg Norman has a personal relationship with Rupert Murdoch. But there have been no concrete talks on the deal, sources said.
It’s clear that networks and advertisers still see the PGA Tour as good business. CBS, ESPN and NBC signed a tour deal worth about $700 million a year a few years ago. Those agreements run until 2030.
Those deals are structured in such a way that the broadcast networks are not dependent on ratings. The PGA Tour sells 75% of its ad sales inventory, leaving the network’s ad sales teams to sell the remaining 25%.
That means every PGA Tour event is profitable for CBS and NBC. The network’s economic model, when it comes to the PGA Tour, is as strong as ever.
Likewise, ad sales executives don’t view PGA Tour televangelists through a ranking lens. Of course, everyone wants to play Tiger Woods in the final group on Sunday, but they buy time in the PGA Tour to reach a special audience.
“We’ve found that people who watch golf typically don’t watch other sports,” says one ad buyer.
Now, that’s just the PGA Tour. Two ad buyers whose clients aren’t asking about LIV — at least not yet. They said they are not recommending LIV at this time due to the uproar over human rights abuses from the government of Saudi Arabia, which they are funding.
Another key is distribution. If LIV continues to broadcast its shows on YouTube and Facebook, it will not get much interest from advertisers, said ad buying executives.
Editor’s Note: This story has been modified from the print version.
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