How many GAA games do you think is too many games to watch this weekend? If you were of a mind, there are plenty of options. For instance, on Clubber.ie, you can watch 28 games from 6 different counties – 10 from Waterford alone.
There are four games from the Galway football championship being shown on the county board’s own streaming service, with two games on Cork’s service also available, as well as TG4 on Sunday afternoon. This is by no means an exhaustive list. For a sporting organisation currently in its ‘off season’, this level of output seems fairly full-on.
Not all of these options are free, of course. An annual pass for Clubber.ie costs €149.99. A weekly pass costs €29.99 (so just over a euro per game this weekend), with a once-off price of €10.99 for a single game, although that may vary slightly.
Galway’s season-long pass, allowing you access to every game streamed by the county board costs €175 for hurling, or €175 for football – although there’s an early bird deal still running that offers you both codes for the same price of €175, promising well over 60 club games over the next 3 months. The Cork streaming service offers you the whole season for €80, although they are showing fewer games. Tyrone GAA were one of the few counties streaming their own games even before the pandemic.
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Whatever you decide to pay, whatever your interest, there is no doubt that live-streaming games has been a boon for county boards. It complements and enhances total income, rather than inhibiting actual attendance figures through the gate.
This was not something anyone really saw coming before Covid, but it is now a complicating factor for the GAA in a number of ways. TG4 are still paying county boards to show live club games every weekend, but it’s a fair bet you won’t see too many games from either the Galway or Cork championships this year – it makes more financial sense to show them on your own streaming service. In fact, there’s no surer way of pissing off your paying customers than to give away for free that for which they have already paid.
Into this cocktail is the news released earlier this month that the GAA invited submissions of interest for media rights to “specific domestic” championship games, ie those currently broadcast by GAAGo.
Initial reports suggested that this was the result of pressure being applied by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, who had questions over the GAA’s most recent broadcast rights deal and the subsequent awarding of games to GAAGo, although that has later been cast into doubt.
Virgin Media and TG4 had questions over how that deal came about too, and this reopening of broadcast rights gave them and any other interested parties a chance to reapply. In May of 2023, when Virgin Media accused the GAA of “not approach(ing) other broadcasters to ascertain whether they would be interested in broadcasting these games”, the GAA felt compelled to respond.
“The GAA did not receive a formal bid from VMTV or an expression of interest…
“VMTV were clear that their model was not to acquire rights rather to acquire ‘ready to go’ packages, ie productions which don’t require outside broadcast set-ups for live match coverage. In short, VMTV were afforded every opportunity to discuss options, variations to packages and to submit a confidential offer. VMTV choose not to bid.”
The deadline for these new submissions of interest was last Monday, and no one expects GAAGo to lose any games. If a broadcaster did put a submission in, then the GAA can proceed with a tendering process alongside a new potential broadcasting partner. If not then Virgin, or anyone else, will have nothing to complain about. Either way, it’s a win-win for the GAA.
In reality, that call for submissions of interest is a sideshow. What should really be exercising people in the GAA is finding a way to minimise the combined cost of watching and attending games for your club and your county.
If you’re a Cork GAA fan who has already paid their GAAGo subscription for the year, already bought plenty of tickets to attend intercounty games during the championship, will attend plenty of club games in the flesh over the next two months, and still also has Rebels TV to pay for, what can be done to lighten the load, when it’s obvious these are also the type of people keeping the lights on in many clubs?
Cutting GAAGo off at the knees might make political hay in mid-April, as no doubt will happen again next year when the latest ‘unmissable’ Munster hurling championship game is played behind its paywall, but growing it, incorporating Clubber and the various county board streaming services into it, and making it cost-effective for GAA members should be the real ambition.
If your club membership is paid online, and your intercounty tickets are bought online with a GAA partner, and your club streaming service and match-days tickets are bought online via county board websites, then there’s a chance for all the information to be collated, and discounts offered to those who are paying on all those fronts. That’s the big opportunity that GAAGo provides, and one which should be the focus of its next five years.
