The national leagues begin at the weekend with the GAA hoping to capitalise on the great positives of two excellent senior championships last summer. In his annual report last week, association director general Páraic Duffy welcomed the five per cent increase in attendance last year but also emphasised the challenge of maintaining crowds.
That might have appeared overly cautious in the wake of a second successive rise in championship attendances – after four straight annual declines – but Duffy’s concern and wider apprehensions are well founded.
For a start, the five per cent increase on 2012 came about at a time when the GAA have intensified their promotional pricing and during the best summer in seven years as well as the best summer’s action in even longer.
For instance, three of the provincial winners – Monaghan’s footballers plus in hurling, Limerick and Dublin - were winning a first title in cumulatively, 94 years.
Crowds respond to two stimuli over which the GAA authorities have no control: the draw and what fixtures it randomly brings about and the occasional novel success for a county which has been out of the limelight.
Advantages
Both of these factors fell into place in a summer with all of the previously mentioned advantages but still the increase was just five per cent, or in and around 65,000.
As in other walks of life, the GAA could have been forgiven for thinking during the middle of the last decade they’d never know another poor day. The completion of Croke Park with its enhanced capacity and the popularity of the championships pushed aggregate attendances as far as touching 2,000,000.
Seven years ago, championship gate receipts hit a record of nearly €25,000,000 but even by then attendances were in decline. The biggest years for the GAA championships were 2003 and ’04 when 1,962,769 and 1,914,956 went through the turnstiles. Even last year’s welcome increase still leaves the total about half a million off the peak of 2003.
If exponential growth hasn’t taken place, there is a reassuring consistency in the figures going back to when the decision to renovate Croke Park was taken, over 20 years ago, but equally plenty of evidence that nothing’s guaranteed.
Compare last year with 1993, the final season before the redevelopment of Croke Park started. The difference in aggregate attendance is less than half a million – 458,648 - but this is before Croke Park’s capacity jumped by almost 20,000 and the back-door system created two separate All-Ireland hurling semi-finals plus two quarter-finals and the qualifiers, which roughly doubled the number of matches in the football championship.
Duffy’s analysis of the precariousness of crowd numbers rests on two points: the growing quality of broadcast coverage and the comparative sluggishness of stadium development.
In his 2012 report he cited an ESPN poll of NFL supporters in the US, according to which 41 per cent said they would rather watch a game on television than in the stands.
"Though it remains robust, NFL attendance is trending downwards and Jonathan Kraft, president of the New England Patriots, offered an interesting perspective at a recent technology summit: "If we want people to come to our stadium and find it worth the money, we have to figure out how we give an experience that's different than the experience at home and give you all the comforts of home."
Returning to the theme this year, Duffy points out that already the trend is accelerating and that developments in American sport tend eventually to have universal applicability. Further ESPN research by the US consumer trends analyst Rich Luker indicates "more than 50% of all US sports fans would rather watch on TV than attend in person".
Provocative punditry
This is understandable in an era of HD television coverage of matches and the drama and provocative punditry that accompanies it.
Another aspect of the challenge of television, Duffy writes, “is what Americans call the “birth of a fan” experience – US research tells us the biggest supporters of a sport or team are those who attended a game before the age of 10; it also tells us if a person doesn’t attend a game before the age of 20, the odds of their ever attending are very slim.”
Improvement of spectator facilities hasn't really happened outside of Croke Park and as far back as the middle of the last decade, Duffy's predecessor Liam Mulvihill expressed disappointment that other GAA venues hadn't set out to emulate – obviously on a reduced scale – the improvements to the flagship stadium.
There will be new venues in Belfast and Cork in the medium-term future, which will modernise their facilities. There is the prospect of addressing this issue.
The only proviso placed on the GAA's agreement to make venues available to the IRFU's 2023 World Cup bid is public money be used to upgrade the stadia being used. Although Croke Park, Casement Park and Páirc Uí Chaoimh will expect to be ready, there is an opportunity for the remaining venues likely to be used - according to speculation, Fitzgerald Stadium in Killarney and Pearse Stadium in Galway (because of their tourist infrastructure) and Semple Stadium in Thurles (because of its centrality and accessibility to arterial roads) - to be significantly improved.
Inadequate
Even were this to come about, it wouldn't be all plain sailing: too many of the other venues would still be inadequate for modern requirements and the presence of top-class stadia in Munster, Ulster and Connacht would create difficulties when it came to allocating venues for provincial finals – take the money, as is the case with Dublin and Croke Park – or continue to allocate to neutral and inferior stadia.
Overall though, the rugby world cup could turn out to be a vital resource in the continuing battle to hang on to GAA attendances.
smoran@irishtimes.com
