Brandel Chamblee Admits Fault, Yet Uses Pickleball to Embarrass LIV Golf

LIV Golf continues to make headlines, for a multitude of reasons. Be it because of the PIF merger deal that gave fans hope, but shockingly collapsed again.

Or be it because of Joaquin Niemann’s multiple wins that even earned Phil Mickelson’s praise.

Speaking of Niemann, the 26-year-old had two consecutive wins this year. Interestingly, his latest win attracted approximately 34,000 viewers on Fox Sports 1.

Despite everyone knowing how talented some of the LIV players are, Phil Mickelson’s greatest critic, Brandel Chamblee, once again went full force after the Saudi-funded league.

“People watch sports that matter,” Chamblee shared with Dan Rapoport during the Dan on Golf Podcast.

To prove his point, the Golf Channel analyst went on to say: “If you asked people in the golf business to go through every tour event this year and tell you who won, they could probably do it.”

“If you asked people to do the same thing about LIV, there’s just zero chance they could, unless they’re in the business of getting into granular detail about everything. I think there’s a sense that those who went to LIV sold their business—really at a discount, I would argue. It’s just not resonating,” he shared.

This came after the 62-year-old golf pundit was asked about his tweet against the Saudi-funded club, where he claimed that LIV is going nowhere.

However, Chamblee did have to own up to making a mistake on a previous post of his regarding LIV Golf’s viewership.

“I think I got the numbers wrong in one of my tweets. I said their year-end event that concluded on the East Coast, in primetime last year with Rahm winning got 55,000. It actually got 89,000,” Chamblee admitted.

“But whether it is 55 or 89, the point is still the same. Relatively speaking, almost no one is watching. More people will watch a pickleball event than that.”

“And you’re talking about Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bubba Watson — I mean, Phil Mickelson. You are talking about obstensibly a star-chalked field. And nobody watched.”

Scott O’Neil, who recently tapped as LIV Golf’s new CEO, recently claimed the reason for poor viewership numbers has much to do with the tournaments happening in the middle of the night in America.

But as Chamblee pointed out, that was not the case for the championship event of the 2024 season.

LIV Golf is hoping to garner increased viewership in 2025 after announcing the deal with FOX Sports. Thus far, that is yet to come to fruition.

What do you think? Is Chamblee just going off again or does LIV truly have no future in American sports fan’s mind? Let us know in the comment section below.

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