Although Croke Park stadium director Peter McKenna appeared to rule out a Katie Taylor title fight at the venue this year, he was in the happy position of announcing a record year in Thursday’s launch of the annual reports for 2025.
Asked was there a prospect of the Taylor fight taking place, he said there was not.
“Being honest, Eddie [Hearn, promoter] hasn’t been in touch with us. The last time I talked to Matchroom was I’d say probably October 2023. It flashes up every so often but no, we haven’t been contacted.
“It’s trying to find out where would be the slot. I think the difficulty there is that what’s the style of the event? And what time of the year it would be on? We have Oasis and Robbie Williams. So, the calendar, really there’s not a lot of space to say, ‘Yeah, I could fit it in on that weekend’, or whatever.”
He was able to confirm however, a very good year for the stadium in 2024. It took in nearly €60 million, after costs generating €41.44 million in 2024 between sports and events rental and ancillary income. This produced a dividend of €16 million for the GAA, bringing the distributions from the stadium to €165.5 million since 2006.
“It probably is [a record],” said McKenna, “59.7 million; it’s huge –1.65m people coming through the doors. They are fantastic figures. Now there’s a huge amount of work in doing that and it’s a credit to everyone who pulls it together.
“I think Stuart [Wilson, Croke Park pitch manager] in particular, the pitch was magnificent for every single game we played here, despite various concerts and other things. Having our own pitch farm is hugely helpful in keeping that kind of standard to a high level.”
Unlike last year, the venue held six concerts in 2024 between Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC and Coldplay. There were also two rugby matches featuring Leinster whose home ground, the RDS, is under reconstruction, and who played an ECC semi-final against Northampton and the URC inter-provincial with Munster in Croke Park.
That business is still available this year. The ECC knock-out tie against Harlequins takes place in April with the possibility of further matches depending on how far Leinster progress in both competitions.
The success of the stadium fed into annual GAA revenues – along with Central Council and the injury fund – of €132 million, a 19 per cent increase on the €112.1 million taken in last year, with a €6.3 million consolidate surplus for 2024.
Central Council accounts indicate that gate receipts were marginally up on last year. Director of Finance Ger Mulryan said that overall, the GAA was able to redistribute 82 per cent of its income back to the association.
Although gate receipts were up marginally up to €39.14m from €38.45m, Mulryan accepted that increased admission prices accounted for that.
“Yeah, that’s a fair statement. I suppose they marginally increased on the back of the ticket price increase.”
Attendances between league and championship and other events run by Central Council’s in fact fell by 10 per cent.
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