I watched last Saturday’s Leinster v Harlequins European Champions Cup knockout game in slack-jawed amazement. My astonishment was not at the quality of Leinster’s play, or indeed at the truly atrocious nature of Quins’ defence, but at the size of the crowd they had attracted into Croke Park for a game against the seventh-best team in the woe-begotten English Premiership.
That result was only going one way, and yet more than 55,000 people had bought a ticket. It was an exceptional job by the Leinster organisation, but really I shouldn’t be surprised. They sold 80,000 tickets for Leinster against Munster in the URC, a competition that no one pays any attention to until March, in October of last year.
Last week, refusing to believe that Leinster could have sold anything north of 30,000 tickets, I went online and saw tickets in the 330-332 Golden Vale of the lower Hogan for €20, and was briefly tempted to go myself for that price. I resisted the urge, but getting people to briefly consider it is often half the battle. If they don’t get me to the Aviva tomorrow, maybe they’ll get me for their home semi-final.
I was there when Ireland faced Bulgaria in the Nations League playoff at the Aviva last month, and sitting in front of me was a man wearing a Finn Harps jacket, with two kids, all of them speaking in a rich Donegal lilt. As I desperately hoped for Ireland to win the tie in ordinary time, thereby sparing us extra-time, I couldn’t help but feel that a 45-minute delay for my trip back to Dublin 8 was one thing, but arriving in Ballybofey at 2am was a rather greater pain in the neck.
Some 40,000 people were there that night, and anyone I spoke to afterwards swore to me they were praying for it to finish in ordinary time too (even if that meant Bulgaria held on). How do you convince people to buy tickets for a sporting event they’d rather leave at full-time defeated than see their own team win after extra-time and penalties?
Obviously, everyone was speaking with their tongue at least three-quarters in their cheek – being fatalistic about the Irish football team is a hard habit to break. In fact, Evan Ferguson’s equalising goal that night against the Bulgarians is exactly the sort of communal moment we all attend sporting events for in the first place.
The Irish Examiner reported on Tuesday that the Munster Council will more than likely break the 300,000 barrier for attendances at the 10 round-robin games in their hurling championship.
Last year’s combined attendance was 270,000, but 10 sell-outs would bring that figure to 320,000 this year. Two sell-outs in Thurles might be stretching it, but 300,000 certainly looks achievable. That is extraordinary, and has no real equivalent in recent GAA history.
Joey Carbery, Munster and Ireland - where did it all go wrong?
The association, as I’ve said before, is generally allergic to the idea of a sell-out. If a game can be played in a two-thirds empty big stadium, instead of a full small stadium, then it’s not even been a choice.
But the Munster hurling championship is now selling out big grounds, grounds that have for years been decried as too large. Before the round robin came into force in 2018, the Gaelic Grounds in Limerick might have gone years without anything within an ass’s roar of a sell-out. Now, courtesy of their all-conquering hurlers, they can realistically look at selling it out twice a year.
Contrast that to MacHale Park in Castlebar, which experienced its first sell-out in what seasoned Mayo-watchers divined was 19 years when Connacht came to town to play Munster a couple of weeks ago.
[ Hurling league final between Cork and Tipperary sold outOpens in new window ]
That last sell-out was the 2006 provincial final between Galway and Mayo, and even though those teams have played each other plenty of times between then and now, there hasn’t been a sell-out in Salthill or in Castlebar since. Maybe it’s exactly that familiarity which depresses crowds, but the 26,000 that made their way to Castlebar for the oval ball must still have been a bit of a jolt to GAA people in the west.
Then again, it was €30 for a stand ticket to see Mayo toil against a Division 3 side last Sunday, and even when placed against the €20 you’d spend watching Leinster put a beat-down on some poor gang of misfits in Croke Park, that’s pretty poor value.
There might be the odd grumble at a €5 ticket-price increase for the Munster championship, but it doesn’t appear to have stopped people paying it. That’s the privileged position they find themselves in. The Leinster (GAA) Council, meanwhile, belatedly took action and reduced stand ticket prices from €25 to €15 for their three preliminary-round games last week.
[ Leinster have sold almost 20,000 tickets for Glasgow clash so farOpens in new window ]
RTÉ reported that ticket sales had risen by 40 per cent for the Wexford-Laois, Longford-Wicklow and Meath-Carlow matches from the three corresponding games last year. Stand tickets are for some reason back up to €25 for the quarter-finals this weekend, and we’ll see if that has any negative impact.
But at least these games are happening in full or almost-full regional grounds. Whether it’s Evan Ferguson, Jordie Barrett, St Pats, Bohs, Munster hurlers or Leinster footballers, that communal feeling is what you’re after. And it’s easier to get it in full grounds than empty ones. The GAA are starting to understand that, and that’s no bad thing.
