The GAA is confident that the delay in deciding on a football championship format at the recent special congress will not impact on the round of media rights negotiations due to conclude before next summer.
That is when the current five-year agreement expires. The coming months’ league and club fixtures are part of the existing deal, which runs out before next year’s championship, the format for which will revert to that last seen in 2017.
A new format for 2023 and onwards is expected to be decided at next February’s annual congress and has obvious implications for the value of the rights agreements, as it is expected to incorporate a greater number of matches.
Peter McKenna, the GAA’s commercial director, said that interest remains high among the various media partners.
“It would have been great to get clarity from the special congress but it’s more important that the GAA finds the best format for the championship. Obviously whatever that may be impacts on what rights we’re selling and issues such as games running parallel to each other.
“I think everyone understands the position we’re in and we haven’t created a rod for ourselves because interest is very strong.”
The media landscape is always changing. Long-term partner, eir Sports – a successor to Setanta Sport, which 15 years ago was Croke Park’s first venture into subscription broadcasting – announced its closure last May, having disclosed in March that it wouldn’t be bidding for any further rights, and has ceased broadcasting.
That live coverage of Saturday national league matches has effectively been taken over by RTÉ in a reversal of its previous policy of not providing live coverage of the spring competition.
It’s not surprising that interest remains strong, as this year’s All-Ireland football final is likely to follow 2020’s as the most watched sports broadcast of the year on the basis of figures just released by RTÉ.
The average audience of 940,000 for the Tyrone-Mayo match compares with 686,000 for last weekend’s Ireland-New Zealand rugby Test and audiences of 677,000 and 499,000 for the soccer internationals against Portugal and Luxembourg in the past week.
There were bigger rugby international audiences earlier this year for Virgin Media’s live broadcast of the Six Nations matches against France and England with the former, unusually, getting bigger average numbers, 798,000 than the latter with 778,000.
The All-Ireland hurling final between Limerick and Cork drew an average of 760,000.
According to McKenna, the interest in Gaelic games broadcasts remains “robust” and that summer schedules are more popular.
“There are better audiences in the summer than in the winter. The classic example was the Masters golf, which had to be switched to winter because of Covid.
“That audience plummeted by 51 per cent when it had to moved and this year, although restored was still 13 per cent down. There are so many variables. In football the unusual pairing plus the interest in Mayo’s ongoing quest to win the All-Ireland would have been factors.”
On Monday it was announced that the GAA and Camogie Association would be working together on commercial rights.
Sinéad McNulty, Camogie Association director general said of the decision to retain the GAA to represent its commercial rights: “We are excited about this commercial arrangement with the GAA and see it as a positive step forward for camogie to maximise the ever-growing commercial potential of our sport.”
According to McKenna, the arrangement was fairly straightforward because of previous co-operation between the associations and the GAA’s strong engagement with women and families
“We’ve always had a fairly good relationship. We would have gone back a number of years with the Liberty sponsorship, which sat well in terms of the insurance products. There was also similar co-operation with AIB.
“Traditionally we would have been strong in that area because of the number of families who attend GAA matches, which gives us a strong footprint. We’ve strong policies on family and children’s tickets, which work in our favour.”
The relevant areas will include national sponsorship sales and sponsorship delivery as well as the selling of camogie’s broadcast rights. The initial term of the agreement is three years.
Tipperary GAA launched an innovative, fund raising scheme at the county final on Sunday. My Stadium Seat offers the opportunity to name a seat in Semple Stadium after yourself, a family member of friend or a club or business. Packages range from €100 to €500 and the funds will go towards the redevelopment of the Kinane Stand. The scheme went live on Monday and can be accessed at www.MyStadiumSeat.com
