GAA defend the right of provinces to set ticket prices

THE GAA have defended the right of provincial councils to set their ticket prices. In the past week there has been criticism of the Munster Council for the price of admission to their provincial semi-finals, with Waterford hurling selector Ken McGrath last week describing the €30 cost of stand tickets for Sunday’s semi-final against Clare as “crazy”.

There is no uniformity across the provinces, with Ulster and Connacht charging €25 for stand access, whereas the Leinster Council charge €25 for the hurling semi-finals and €30 for the football. In the latter case it can be argued that the football is actually better value, as both Dublin-Wexford and Kildare-Meath will be played on a double bill at Croke Park.

To date there isn’t a clear trend on whether attendances at matches are falling. The Ulster championship has been doing better than last year. Leinster suffered a drop because of a poor attendance at the Dublin-Louth match but the province is confident of regaining ground in the remainder of the championship.

On the other hand Sunday’s crowd of 12,296 at the Waterford-Clare match in Thurles was accepted as disappointing by Munster Council.

Feargal McGill, the GAA’s director of games administration, said the varying admission prices reflected the differences between the respective provinces.

“Provinces have different needs and different numbers at games. For instance, there are plenty of games in Leinster and the Ulster football championship is competitive across a range of counties but Munster and Connacht have to strike a balance between the drawing potential of their fixtures and the amount of revenue they have to raise.

“The only way of standardising ticket prices across the board would involve some element of pooling and that’s not compatible with the GAA’s administrative structures.”

Pricing also takes place within a zero-sum environment. In other words, if ticket prices come down so do revenues and the amount that can be disbursed to counties.

McGill doesn’t agree ticket prices are driving down attendances. “I’m not sure that that’s the big influence. For instance admission prices to the All-Ireland qualifiers is considerably cheaper than for championship but will more people attend the Westmeath-Louth qualifier at the end of the month than went to their Leinster championship game a few weeks ago? I think they won’t.

“Ask yourself if Munster Council had halved the admission cost on Sunday would the crowd at Waterford-Clare have doubled? That’s the sort of consideration they have to take into account.

“Our core audience after the older, 50- to 60-year olds who attend nearly every match is the younger demographic, mostly male and single, which tends to go to big events, and comes out for the championship.

“A huge proportion of them aren’t in the country at the moment because of emigration. There are also 30,000 over in Poland at the moment and a good number of those would probably attend our matches. Look I’m not saying that explains any major shortfall at specific games but it all has an impact.

“I think we have a responsibility with regard to prices. I don’t think they have that big an influence on the size of crowds but however we have a social obligation to make it as easy as we can for our members and supporters and I think you can see that reflected in the promotional packages on offer in all of the provinces.”