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For a few minutes on a Sunday afternoon in Oklahoma, LIV Tulsa was watching TV. Turns out, that was the problem: For most of the golf world, Lev Tulsa wasn’t on the television.
Yes, as LIV finished its final event, it did so without the aid of television viewers in some of the nation’s largest media markets, which chose to air scheduled programming during the three-way playoff game to determine the league’s final championship.
It all started when Dustin Johnson turned the 18th hole early Sunday night. Branden Grace and Cameron Smith, the tournament’s co-leaders, are at the club one stroke better than the U16’s Johnson and poised for a playoff. If Johnson, one of the last remaining group members in the tournament, makes a birdie on the 18th, he will join Grace and Smith in the playoff.
That was, in theory, a dream scenario for American Major League broadcaster, The CW. Playoffs are routinely the most-watched moments in golf tournaments, as viewers follow the flow to ensure they witness the defining moment of the tournament. A playoff with Johnson and Smith will give the CW two of LIV’s most iconic players going head-to-head at this venue. Even if the playoff turned out to be a fiasco, the situation promised viewers at least another 20 minutes of serious action.
But with the fall of Johnson, who sent the championship to a three-way playoff, lead LIV announcer Arlo White made a quick note for fans watching from home: The broadcast was also available to viewers on the CW app.
At the time, it seemed like an odd statement. Why bother with a self-promoting moment when everyone who planned to watch the tournament is already tuning in? But a few seconds later, when the clocks turned to 6:30 p.m. ET, many fans quickly knew why. With the playoff game underway, affiliates in major markets across the United States began shutting out of LIV Tulsa, resuming regular programming while the championship was not decided.
For those in New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a host of other “Top 25 TV Markets” that account for huge percentages of TV viewership, Just The way to watch the playoff came through the LIVGolf + and CW apps. Viewers in those markets, who only minutes earlier would have been watching the event live, were instead treated to sitcom reruns and unsolicited news programming.
LIV’s dream viewing situation quickly turned into a nightmare. Fans on social media were outraged at the network’s seemingly abrupt decision, and at LIV for letting this happen. LIV, for its part, was likely equally exasperated by the viewership lost from those key markets — an important metric for the league in getting advertisers and sponsors interested.
As a few accounts associated with LIV have pointed out, The CW’s decision to drop LIV was similar in many ways to the “coverage gaps” that PGA Tour broadcast partners run for several weeks. Except that, of course, unlike gaps in Tour coverage — which usually come before the start of weekend coverage — LIV happened in during the tournament’s most crucial period. This kind of coverage gap would be too extreme for golfing establishment broadcasters. In fact, just weeks ago, NBC extended its coverage beyond 90 minutes to show the completion of the Chevron Championship, collecting record ratings along the way.
It will be difficult to know how many LIV viewers were lost to the coverage decision, especially given the league’s inconsistencies in reporting TV audience sizes. The good news, at least, is that LIV won’t have long to overcome the audience gap lost in Dustin Johnson’s win. The league’s next televised event will take place May 26-28 in Washington, DC