Sir, -Denis Walsh is mystified that the Irish public expect major GAA championship games on free-to-air television while accepting paywalled European Cup rugby.
Two things can be true at once, especially when comparing apples and oranges. European Cup rugby is an international professional sport that has required a television subscription since 2003. Some games were free-to-air thereafter but a government move to list Heineken Cup games as free-to-air fell in the face of IRFU and fan opposition in 2014. Rugby fans have long made their peace with this.
GAA, LGFA and camogie are played by amateurs primarily before a domestic audience which has had access to free-to-air games for half a century.
The GAA has been slow-walking paywalls into Irish livingrooms since 2022 with the defence that more competition for RTÉ is needed, more funds are needed and 83 per cent of all revenue is reinvested in the game.
RM Block
There is no appropriate weight given to the damage of declining visibility of our games in a crowded market. If the GAA so badly needs the circa €1 million profit it makes from GAA Go, a €2 levy on all GAA memberships would quickly fill that gap.
GAA fans know this is the thin end of the wedge – once paywalls are widely accepted, they will creep later and later into the championship. The same arguments the GAA makes now could equally apply to delisting the All-Ireland finals as free-to-air events in a decade or less.
If you can’t see it, you can’t be it. Putting major games behind paywalls does nothing to grow or maintain the sport in Ireland. GAA is supposed to be “Where we all belong”, not “Where we all need a subscription”. – Yours, etc,
SEÁN Ó LOINGSIGH,
Dundrum,
Dublin 16.
