The GAA recorded a €500,000 drop in its revenues in 2015. The decline is marginal, from €56.2 million to €55.7 million and has been caused by a big fall-off in gate receipts for the All-Ireland hurling championship.
Overall hurling receipts were down 30 per cent (€11.4 million to €8.1 million) but football rose by 12 per cent and there was a €2.2 million rise in commercial revenues.
Although this represents the first drop in association income in five years Tom Ryan, the GAA’s Director of Finance, described the association’s finances as “stable” and said that the underlying trend was “very, very healthy” with average attendances slightly up at 19,000 and “significant income from Croke Park” of €7 million.
Over the past two years for the first time the hurling championship had taken in more than its football equivalent but in 2015 for the first time in three years there was no replay of the All-Ireland final and the semi-finals were significantly less well attended than in 2014.
Football also benefited from a replay in the Dublin-Mayo All-Ireland semi-final, which drew a full house to Croke Park.
In total the football championship brought in €12.8 million (€1.4 million up on 2014) and the hurling €8.1 million (€3.5 million down on the previous year).
The figures for the football league was slightly down, from €2.6 million to €2.5 million and the hurling from €1.6 million to €1.4 million on the 2014 figures but in the Ryan said that the previous year had constituted “a high water mark” in league revenues.
There were questions again this year concerning the disproportion in the size of Dublin’s games development grants, which at €1.46 million make up 47 per cent of all such grants disbursed in the country.
“We’re conscious of the discrepancies; we’re conscious of the challenges that it poses for counties,” said Ryan. “I don’t think you can solely attribute playing success or otherwise down to purely financial reasons. Quite an amount of it depends on financial resources, I know that, but there are other factors at play as well.
“There is a small group that has been constituted to look specifically, not at Dublin - it would be unfair to characterise it as Dublin - but just to look at the total amount that we generate in a year and if you think in terms of discretionary spend, I mentioned €55-56m as the revenue number.
“In a typical year, we would expect, worse case, to generate over the next couple of years, say €50m. We think we can expend that discretionarily maybe €25-30m and our job is to look at how we can actually distribute that in the most equitable way.”
GAA Central Council revenue (10 years)
2015: €55.7 million
2014: €56.2 million
2013: €54.6 million
2012: €52.8 million
2011: €46.9 million
2010: €58 million
2009: €67.7 million
2008: €64.3 million
2007: €63.2 million
2006: €43.9 million
Gate receipts (10 years) [2007-10 – rugby and soccer rentals included]
2015: €26.7 million
2014: €29.4 million
2013: €29.3 million
2012: €26.8 million
2011: €24.2 million
2010: €25.8 million
2009: €25.5 million
2008: €26.4 million
2007: €31.5 million
2006: €26.5 million
