LIV’in La Vida Golfa: LIV Golf vs the PGA Tour

LIV Golf has burst onto the golf scene this year, stealing both PGA Tour players and headlines, as a well-funded new golf tour backed by a Saudi sovereign wealth fund chaired by the controversial Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. It stands to become the first real threat the PGA has faced in its nearly century-old existence.

Key Takeaways

• Similarweb estimates show a large spike in traffic for the keyword search “liv golf” peaking in late May.
• While LIV Golf did see a spike in traffic visits during the week of June 7th of 645% over the prior week, which coincided with its first event, the surge was short-lived. It remains to be seen what kind of online traction it can sustain, as a long-term challenger to PGA
• In February, after he made comments criticizing the PGA Tour during an interview, search volume for “Phil Mickelson” spiked 409% from the prior month.
• Similarweb estimates show engagement metrics for pgatour.com dominate livgolf.com in almost every category, illustrating an uphill battle for LIV as it tries to compete with the PGA.

Saudi Backed Tour Threatens PGA’s Monopoly

LIV Golf is a new controversial professional golf tour, funded by the Public Investment Fund, a Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund, that emerged last year. It formally launched in October 2021 as LIV Golf Investments and named former professional golfer Greg Norman as CEO. “LIV” is a reference to the Roman numeral for 54, the score if every hole on a par 72 course were birdied, and a nod to the tour’s tournament format of 54 holes compared to the 72-hole format favored by the PGA Tour and all four major tournaments.

Livgolf.com is a platform to be reckoned with as it not only provides all the information about the tour, but it’s also the source for purchasing tickets to the events – making it key in promoting attendance and brand awareness. Currently, LIV doesn’t have a broadcast rights deal in place for television and is relying solely on its YouTube channel for live streaming events.

LIV presents a potentially existential threat to the PGA due to its success in recruiting players and the seemingly limitless financial resources available to it. The tour has made headlines in the golf world for luring players from the PGA by paying them huge signing fees, reportedly in the nine-figure range, to simply show up and play. The first notable player to defect was Phil Mickelson earlier this spring. He has been widely criticized for the move.

LIV Golf Keyword Search

Worldwide, Weekly searches, Desktop

Similarweb estimates show a large spike in traffic for the keyword search “liv golf” peaking in late May. The total global traffic share for the top ten sites for organic desktop search traffic for the keyword “liv golf” grew from 20% for the week of April 26th to 85% for the week of May 24th. This search traffic is a strong proxy for recent interest in the topic and indicates growing brand awareness of LIV Golf. Organic search refers to top matches on the keywords a user enters, not boosted by paid search advertising.

Big Name Players are Defecting to LIV

In addition to Mickelson, several high profile players have now signed on to join the LIV tour. Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka have all recently joined to name a few. But according to the latest Similarweb estimates, the player that has garnered the most search interest as a result of the move is Mickelson. In February, when he criticized the PGA during an interview with Golf Digest while in Saudi Arabia to play a tournament, search volume for his name spiked 409% over January.

After playing in the first LIV Golf event held near London, the PGA Tour took the drastic step of suspending 17 players, including Mickelson, who competed in the tournament and has threatened to suspend any players who compete in future LIV Golf events.

LIV Golf Has Long Way To Go Before It Can Compete with PGA

Any new entrant almost always faces an uphill battle when trying to compete with the incumbent and the LIV Golf story is no different. However, in this David versus Goliath tale, LIV Golf’s slingshot is a large war chest filled with cash that it’s using to entice players to join and inflate tournament purses above payouts typically seen on the PGA Tour. LIV has been criticized by many for being backed by a country with a spotty human rights track record. Among other things, members of the Saudi leadership have been accused of direct involvement in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Similarweb estimates show the PGA Tour’s site metrics dominate that of LIV Golf’s. While LIV Golf did see a spike in traffic visits during the week of June 7th of 645% over the prior week, which coincided with its first event, the surge was short-lived. The following week of June 14th saw traffic decline by 74%. The site had seen very low traffic beginning at its inception in April and continuing into May prior to the first event. In contrast, the PGA Tour’s site sees millions of weekly visitors and experienced a 90% spike in traffic visits during the lead up to the week of the PGA Championship, one of the sport’s four majors, held from May 19th-22nd.

Similarweb estimates show the PGA site also dominates LIV’s site on most engagement metrics with 17.5 million monthly visits compared to only 52 thousand visits for LIV’s site from March to May. LIV has slightly more pages per visit at 2.9 versus 2.3 for the PGA and a better bounce rate (percentage of visitors who leave the site after only viewing the homepage) of 50.7% versus 55.8% for the PGA site.

Outlook

It would appear that it will take some time for LIV to drive traffic and engagement to its site. The PGA has a commanding lead in terms of metrics and site traffic. But LIV has been getting a great deal of free publicity in the form of media attention. This is clearly one of the biggest stories in the golf world since Tiger Woods turned pro in the late 1990s. If LIV can continue to lure key players and secure a broadcast rights deal with a major network, it could position itself to be, at the very least, a nuisance to the PGA Tour for the foreseeable future.

The Similarweb Insights Newsroom is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

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by Anthony T. Occhipinti

Senior Analyst

Anthony, with a finance background, joined Similarweb in 2022. A Kansas City native and KC Chiefs fan, he enjoys golf, cooking, and family life in New Jersey.