GAA’s money train spinning out of control with ‘frightening’ budget spends
Inter-county budgets spiral out of control in frantic game of keep-up
“Counties are living week to week, month to month”
“Dublin have commercial strength none can match”
USE of the word ‘frightening’ by those charged with controlling the spending of counties is not, it can be agreed, a good thing.
But twice in the past 12 months, county board treasurers have reached for that word in describing the job of funding the modern inter-county behemoth.
Kevin O’Toole is starting his final year as treasurer of the Mayo board, and he was candid in speaking at the county’s convention this month.
‘It is a very onerous task, the responsibility of the amount of money involved in it. It’s frightening actually,’ he said, in comments reported by The Mayo News.
‘And it’s unfair, whatever about volunteerism, to ask somebody to manage a budget of that size.’
A year ago, the Roscommon convention heard from treasurer Seamus Maher that it was costing a ‘frightening’ €15,000 a week to support the senior football team.
Finance is now generally understood to be a theatre of battle that is critical to trying to achieve success in modern Gaelic games.
This is a particularly tender point in football, where the advanspending tage Dublin enjoys in grant support for developmental coaching is seen as further queering the pitch in their favour.
But at inter-county level, they can call upon serious commercial strength. Their website lists 12 ‘official partners’ outside of their main sponsors. These include a sleeping partner, a performance baselayer partner and an airline.
The latter may seem an odd sponsor for a team with no sporting reason to ever leave the island, but it is illustrative of the strength of the Dublin brand — and of the fundraising standards they set that leaves other counties using the word ‘frightening’.
There was another interesting contribution at the Mayo convention on this topic. Mayo chairman Mike Connelly said appointing a commercial manager is the ‘No1 priority’ for the county in 2019.
‘The Mayo GAA brand is probably the fifth-strongest brand in the country,’ said Connelly.
‘You can take Dublin, Leinster, Munster and Ulster rugby and we probably come in around fifth.
‘Kerry have recruited a commercial person to try and increase their revenue. That’s where we have to take ourselves. It won’t just happen overnight but it’s part of our plan for next year.’
It is understandable if such talk alarms some within the GAA, but the stark truth is we are almost beyond the point where there is time or space for discussions on the levels of funding required for inter-county teams; it is now simply an established fact.
This time last year, Kevin McStay told local journalists in Roscommon that the levels of reported at the convention were necessary to survive, let alone chase success.
‘That’s where some of the counties are,’ he said. ‘They are living from week to week, month to month. I just don’t see where we can cut any more corners.’
Plenty of managers will have sympathised with what he said then, and it was noteworthy that some of the language used around Roscommon spending in 2017 was echoed in Mayo in 2018.
The counties sit at different points on the football curve, with Mayo much closer to Dublin, notwithstanding their qualifier defeat to Kildare in June. With James Horan returned as manager of the county’s footballers, there is hope in Mayo again. Supporters believe they are the team best placed to challenge Dublin and upset the champions’ ambitions of an unprecedented five All-Irelands in a row. Keeping pace will come at a cost, though. The county convention was told of a decline in costs associated with the senior footballers in 2018, thanks to their early exit from the Championship. It cost €848,053 to resource the side this year, compared to €1,123,995 in 2017, when they were beaten by Dublin in the final.
That link between Championship success and increased cost was also illustrated in Limerick this year. Their inter-county preparation costs for 2017 (covering all teams representing the county in hurling and football) were €1,148,631. For this year, they were €1,429,218.
It was estimated that half of that figure went on the hurlers, who won the county’s first senior hurling All-Ireland in 45 years in August.
This is logical, and with success comes increased fundraising and sponsorship opportunities, but maintaining the balance between expenditure and sustainability is a challenge that treasurers raise in their end-of-year reports time and again.
Kerry’s expenditure on their teams for 2018 exceeded €1,000,000 despite the county failing to get past the Super 8s.
The decision to establish and maintain a training panel to coach those players close to the senior panel was cited as a reason, and it led to the treasurer, Dermot Lynch, proposing that panel sizes be capped at 32 players.
Analysis of Dublin’s convention was dominated by a predictably colourful secretary’s report, but no financial figures were included. They are unlikely to vary greatly from the 2017 numbers; as serial contenders, Dublin’s costs are always high.
They also have the challenge, like Limerick, Cork and Galway, of maintaining two senior teams, in
hurling and football. Dublin’s inter-county spending for 2017 reached €1,604,353, second to Cork, whose costs were €1,747,609.
Interestingly, Mayo were third on that 2017 list for overall intercounty spending, at €1,542,547. As outlined above, well over twothirds of this were absorbed by the senior team after they reached the All-Ireland final through the qualifiers.
Yet it is easy to understand why Dublin become frustrated with the attention on their financial status when their spending across the two codes is almost matched by Mayo’s, where the vast majority of resources are consumed by the county’s footballers.
Dublin, of course, call upon commercial strength that no other county can match — but the rest are trying to close in on them.
Mayo’s imminent employment of a commercial manager makes one wonder what has taken them so long (and the same point applies to Kerry). These are large counties who can count on huge support at home and among large emigrant communities.
Finding a way to monetise that support is the next step they must take in trying to keep up with Dublin.