The Gaelic Athletic Association has defended the decision to sell a rights package for its Gaelic football and hurling tournaments to pay-television broadcaster BSkyB – citing the prospect of reaching Irish expatriate audiences as a driving factor in the deal.
Earlier this month, Sky, public-service broadcaster RTÉ, pay-television broadcaster Setanta Sports and Irish-language free-to-air broadcaster TG4 were awarded rights for the GAA in Ireland in four-year deals from 2014 to 2017.
Sky 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.
Despite RTE retaining live rights to 31 games per year, the move to award exclusive rights to Sky came in for widespread criticism and was interpreted as the latest and most significant threat to the GAA’s proudly held amateur status.
GAA director general Páraic Duffy and president Liam O’Neill were invited to discuss the deal with the Irish government joint committee yesterday and took questions from members of parliament for almost two hours.
Duffy said: “We don't believe that the charge made against GAA of disenfranchising supporters is sustainable. Due to the unfortunate upturn in Irish emigration, it is no longer tenable for the GAA to see the audience of Gaelic games as living solely in Ireland. If we had decided that all television coverage of our games were to be free to air, we would have to abandon what we see as our obligation to GAA supporters abroad.”
Commercial broadcaster Seven acquiring rights in Australia to 45 live games per year from the football and hurling championships in a one-season deal lends weight to Duffy’s vision of expanding the GAA’s global presence and he rejected the notion that a decision to go with Sky was financially motivated.
“Cynicism has always been the easy refuge of those who are afraid to engage in analysis and reasonable debate,” he added. “The cynical claim would have it that the GAA went to Sky for the money. Not only is this not true, but it also conveniently avoids noticing the recent announcement of a major investment by the GAA in redeveloping London's Ruislip grounds, a project also made possible by financial support from the Department of Foreign Affairs.”
Duffy went on to claim that one million households across Ireland already have access to Sky.