The Gaelic Athletic Association is negotiating with pay-television broadcaster Sky Sports over the introduction of special discounted subscription deals for clubs, following on from Sky’s acquisition of GAA rights last week.
Sky, public-service broadcaster RTÉ, pay-television broadcaster Setanta Sports and Irish-language free-to-air broadcaster TG4 have been awarded rights for the GAA in Ireland in four-year deals from 2014 to 2017.
Sky has acquired exclusive rights in Ireland to 14 championship games, including eight Saturday evening matches in the All-Ireland qualifiers, two All-Ireland football championship quarter-finals and four provincial championship games on Saturday and Sunday evenings.
The GAA has been criticised for awarding the rights to a pay-television broadcaster on an exclusive basis, but the Irish Independent newspaper said talks are underway for GAA clubs to be granted discounted Sky subscriptions allowing them to show the games in their clubhouses.
GAA commercial director Peter McKenna said: “We will work with Sky and see if there are things we can do in terms of getting subscriptions for clubs and so forth. All of these things are happening as we speak. What we are trying to do is get them contact details with clubs, which Sky said they would want around the launch of the event. We are working on it at the moment.”