THE GAA may be facing a revenue loss should Dublin lose next Sunday’s Leinster final against Kildare. The reason is the weekend of the final round of All-Ireland qualifiers, in which defeated provincial finalists take part, is scheduled for the same dates as the upcoming U2 concerts in Croke Park.

“There won’t be any moving of the dates,” according to the GAA’s operations manager Feargal McGill. “We are aware this might be the outcome, but the stadium isn’t available that weekend. Do we believe that there will be large numbers of supporters unable to see the match should Dublin be involved? That’s not certain.

“The only recent precedent we have for Dublin playing a major football county outside of Croke Park is in 2003 when they met Derry in Clones. That day the crowd was just over 18,000.

“You have to factor in that supporters are not as keen on qualifiers as they are on championship games. We work on the assumption that attendances are sometimes as low as 33 per cent of the numbers who might go to a championship fixture.”

Final qualifier rounds in football take place on the last weekend of this month, as do the All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals.

McGill appeared to rule out the possibility that Dublin’s hurlers and footballers could be on the same bill were the latter in the qualifiers.

“I think the priority in that case would be to play the hurling quarter-finals at the same venue,” he said.

Meanwhile, the GAA is looking into the possibility of retaining some broadcast rights for its website, www.gaa.ie.

In the wake of the collapse of the Setanta Sports channel in Britain, a number of matches were streamed live on the internet at the weekend, but the association is looking at the possibility of using its own platform in the future.

“The main focus at the moment is to make sure the games are available to our audiences overseas,” according to Croke Park’s commercial and marketing manager Dermot Power.

“At the moment, the main problem is in Britain where the pubs and clubs outlets don’t exist at the moment because of the Setanta administration.

“So it was essential that we got a platform and get back the rights, which we’re looking into at the moment for Britain. There isn’t a problem with the US, Canada, Australia and Africa.

“We’re looking at taking back some of the rights and also the possibility of streaming games live going forward and orientating towards home viewing as well as the pubs and clubs.”