On Thursday, the Saudi-funded LIV Golf league made one of its biggest announcements yet. Entering its third official season, LIV has found a major broadcast partner in Fox Sports.

Per the announcement, Fox will carry each tournament round on the LIV Golf schedule live across its family of networks. Before this season, LIV’s television presence was limited to The CW on Saturdays and Sundays. The first round of each tournament could only be streamed, and The CW often aired Saturday and Sunday rounds on tape delay if a tournament was being played overseas.

Fox, of course, is a much larger platform than The CW. But the devil might be in the details when it comes to LIV’s new deal.

According to Thursday’s announcement, over half of LIV’s schedule will air on either the Fox broadcast channel or FS1 — the two primary homes for Fox’s sports programming. The rest will be placed on the little-watched FS2 or Fox Business Network.

Without an exact schedule to accompany the release, it’s unclear whether the share of LIV broadcasts on FS2 or Fox Business is closer to 50% or just a few rounds here and there when Fox or FS1 has other programming obligations. But if the deal leans heavily on Fox’s smaller channels, LIV could find its broadcasts being watched by even fewer people than under its old contract.

According to an advanced schedule published by the TV Button Pusher X account, the Fox broadcast channel will air 16 rounds of LIV Golf during the 2025 season. That is approximately 38% of the league’s inventory. Under the league’s old deal, 67% of its inventory aired on broadcast television (albeit on the less popular CW).

No doubt, any LIV Golf that airs on Fox’s broadcast channel will blow its previous records out of the water. But when the rogue league is passed off to the Fox cable networks, things might get a bit dicey.

The first thing about this broadcast deal is that the tournaments will air live. That won’t always be good news when it comes to capturing an American audience. Seven of LIV’s 14 scheduled events are set to take place in the Eastern Hemisphere at odd hours stateside. That includes LIV’s first four events, which will take place half a world away in Riyadh, Adelaide, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

As such, it’s highly unlikely LIV will get off to a strong viewership start, no matter what channels the tournaments air on.

But even beyond the international flair of LIV’s schedule, the truth is that FS1, FS2, and Fox Business aren’t exactly ideal channels to be shown on, even in comparison to The CW.

When looking at Variety’s list of the most-watched channels of 2024, as measured by Nielsen, The CW outranks all three of Fox’s cable offerings set to show LIV events. The CW finished 24th out of all measured television networks in primetime viewership last year. FS1, FS2, and Fox Business ranked 36th, 138th, and 90th respectively out of 155 measured channels.

While FS1 might seem like an upgrade from The CW given it’s a sports-specific cable network of some import, the numbers aren’t all that different.

Take Saturday, January 4, for instance (an average weekend programming lineup for the network). At noon ET, FS1 averaged 75,000 viewers for a DePaul-Villanova men’s college basketball game. At 2 p.m. ET, the network averaged 126,000 viewers for Butler-St. John’s. Then at 4 p.m. ET, FS1 averaged 58,000 viewers for a Butler-Marquette women’s college basketball game (though that broadcast competed directly with an NFL game on ESPN). Saturday, December 28 was even worse for FS1. Its men’s hoops tripleheader that day averaged a paltry 33,000 viewers (though they faced direct NFL competition throughout the afternoon and evening).

If you can believe it, LIV’s broadcasts on The CW drew comparatively large audiences during its first two seasons. The final round of LIV’s opening event in Mayakoba last season averaged 432,000 viewers on The CW. Its linear television debut two years ago averaged 291,000 viewers for its final round. Heck, even the league’s individual championship last season, which is often cited as a resounding failure for the league, averaged 89,000 viewers for its final round, higher than any number of live sporting events to air on FS1 this year.

These comparisons, of course, are not apples-to-apples. But it should paint a sobering reality for LIV: FS1 doesn’t necessarily offer the exposure many people believe it does.

The comparison looks even more unfavorable when accounting for rounds that will air on FS2 and Fox Business. On the two Saturdays examined above, FS2 failed to eclipse 28,000 viewers for any measured event. Fox Business, on the other hand, is not a destination sports fans are accustomed to turning on. It has been used as an overflow channel for sports programming in the past, but has never aired live sports of its own.

Does the power of the Fox Sports brand help LIV compared to what The CW could offer? Certainly. Will LIV events out-rate regular-season Big East basketball on FS1? That’s also likely.

But will LIV’s viewership increase appreciably year-over-year, even when accounting for telecasts on Fox? That remains to be seen. Any window that LIV airs on FS2 or Fox Business will almost assuredly lower its averages from last year’s broadcasts on The CW. And rounds airing on FS1 might be closer to those CW numbers than people think.

All of this creates a murky picture of whether LIV’s total average viewership this season will be aided by the new Fox deal. Once the broadcast schedule is released, and the exact breakdown between networks is known, LIV’s viewership will come into focus a bit more.

Still, there is so much unknown as LIV enters its third full season. Fox’s promotional chops could lift the tour to new heights. Or, its sideshow status could remain unchanged, despite the legitimacy Fox provides.

LIV Golf and the PGA Tour are set for a heated ratings battle this summer when the rogue tour competes directly head-to-head against the PGA Tour’s three FedEx Cup Playoff events. With nine of the 16 LIV windows set to air on Fox broadcast being rounds that directly compete with the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup, there is clearly no love lost between the two entities. Even if they’re still angling for a reunion publicly.