Sean McGoldrick: It’s time for GAA top brass to explain streaming deal… they’ve nothing to apologise for

After Donal Óg Cusack launched his verbal Exocet missile at a variety of targets on the Sunday Game all hell broke loose on the heads of the GAA and RTÉ.

It is worth examining how we reached this point.

In the last 18 months the GAA took two decisions which, albeit unwittingly, led to controversy erupting.

Firstly it opted for a split season, which meant all inter-county competitions had to be completed by the end of July. On top of that, it adopted a new expanded format for the All-Ireland football series.

There were 60 games in the 2022 All-Ireland football series. There will be 99 this year, and only an extra week set aside to play the additional 39 matches. Twenty four games will be played in the Sam Maguire series between next weekend and June 17/18, just to eliminate four counties.

The Tailteann Cup is run under the same format. But other than the semi-finals and final the games in the secondary competition were never likely to feature on free-to-air television.

One doesn’t require a degree in logistics to understand that squeezing so many additional games into such a restricted time frame would create headaches, not least for the media organisations expected to cover them.

The final leg of a treble whammy hit the GAA last autumn when Sky Television, who had broken the taboo on pay-per-view games in the All-Ireland championship eight years previously, exited the market.

Its departure left the GAA with a giant-sized headache. Even with the best will in the world only a fracture of the games in the expanded All-Ireland championships could be showed live on terrestrial TV.

The GAAGO model was originally launched to allow GAA fans living abroad to access live TV coverage of the championship. During Covid-19 it expanded its remit, when spectators were barred from attending games.

In the new TV-rights deal announced last October, RTÉ and BBC Northern Ireland had access to 31 live championship games. A further 38 would be shown on GAAGO, a pay-per-view streaming service, which is accessed via Wi-Fi.

Predictably, there wasn’t a peek out of politicians or the Liveline faithful when this was announced, even though the print media highlighted the possibility of a backlash.

The GAA then shipped two unlucky breaks.

The Limerick v Clare Munster hurling championship match was due to be screened free-to-air.

But the match was switched to Saturday night in order to avoid a clash with the Great Limerick Run, whose route took it past the Gaelic Grounds.

So, the flame of indignation got lit and the explosive finish to the Cork v Tipperary game was the equivalent of pouring petrol on the flame.

It has been totally overlooked that there was nothing special about the first hour of the game, and last year’s corresponding match was a forgettable one-sided affair.

The bottom line is that it is neither practical, or financially, feasible to have every championship available free-to-air on terrestrial TV.

It is a shame the GAA top brass chose not to explain how important the revenue from TV deals is to the GAA.

Last year, for example, media rights contributed €15.3m to the GAA coffers, compared to €6.2m from sponsorship.

There is a delicious irony that the game which provoked so much controversy took place in Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

In 2020, the GAA’s Central Council had to provide a €10m loan in order for the redevelopment of the stadium to be completed.

The response from the GAA leadership team to the controversy was puzzling.

Granted, the Head of GAAGO Noel Quinn, who was only appointed the previous week, was wheeled out on Monday to answer questions from the print journalists.

GAA President Larry McCarthy attended the launched of the Tailteann Cup on the same day, but did not speak on the topic.

Surely, McCarthy or either Director General Tom Ryan or Commercial Director Peter McKenna should have come out and explained the rationale behind the deal. They had nothing to apologise for.

As Croke Park executives lick their wounds after a bruising week they might reflect on the words of Oscar Wilde:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

One suspects though they might not agree with him.