Competitive balance is the vital currency
IT’S only last April that the issue of sporting structures made global headlines, front page and back. Who knew that the prospect of a breakaway new European Super League, set to feature 12 of the continent’s biggest football clubs, would unite in opposition everyone from football fans the world over, politicians, and various heads of state with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince William even having a say, given that the Premier League cabal was at the heart of the deal.
If it quickly looked to be on life support, well, the last rites came via a statement from US banking giant JP Morgan, who had to come clean and admit it was the one bankrolling the whole money grab, to the tune of $4billion, the debt financing being secured against broadcasting rights for the tournament.
‘We clearly misjudged how this deal would be viewed by the wider football community and how it might impact them in the future. We will learn from this.’
A Wall Street institution reduced to a grovelling apology to lovers of the Beautiful Game and those who feel that history, tradition and romance is not to be sniffed at.
But what their presence also revealed is that the whole shindig came down fundamentally to one thing: money. Having one of the main US banks involved showed that it was all about the bottom line. You don’t commit $4billion without crunching the figures and doing a deep financial dive. And whatever about the ethics or football philosophical questions raised by the whole grubby affair, JP Morgan clearly thought the figures added up.
Meanwhile, the most radical review of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship is up for vote at Special Congress this Saturday — in the shape of a ‘flip season’ model that would see the championship run on a leaguebased model in summer and the provincial championships decoupled and run separately in spring — and the debate the past week has been reduced to a familiar theme: money.
How much the three options on the table will be worth in gate receipts and overall revenue.
Given that the proposals have come from the GAA’s own corridors of power and a task force handpicked to plot an alternative to the status quo, it seems staggering that a proper projected costing wasn’t the first thing that was done.
Better that than the confusing and contradictory messaging suddenly emerging in the past week with the countdown on to vote and the bottom line suddenly being revealed as a very important part of the debate.
Imagine putting together a business plan for a multi-million pound enterprise which is effectively what the All-Ireland race entails — and not first costing it?
Croke Park has a financial department equipped to do just that. A director general in Tom Ryan who is actually the association’s own former director of finance.
And yet what ended up happening? Task force member and former Meath minor manager Conor O’Donoghue felt compelled to try and take on the costing himself as someone who works in financial planning, causing headlines with his own projections of Proposal B generating up to €10million in extra revenue. Croke Park then belatedly briefed county board treasurers last Thursday, basically dissing the same figures. They see Proposal A featuring provincial conferences earning €19.3m — this option has garnered little support as it involves shunting counties into other provinces to make four even groups of eight. Proposal B was estimated at generating a half-million less, in €18.8m.
That leaves the option of a senior football championship season featuring the backdoor qualifier format, plus second-tier Tailteann Cup, estimated by Croke Park at topping the lot and bringing in €19.6m. It was almost as if the GAA was panicked by the prospect of Proposal B getting enough support, especially when the Gaelic Players Association have shown strong leadership on this issue and made a very convincing and public play for change.
And so the disputed financials have continued to be played out over the national airwaves. Ulster CEO Brian McAvoy was on RTÉ Sunday Sport and claimed that the model for radical change to the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship would leave his own provincial body with an estimated financial shortfall of threequarters of a million and cause ‘carnage’ to the provincial championships. His Leinster equivathe lent Michael Reynolds gave an interesting interview yesterday on OTB AM in which he again outlined the opposition to Proposal B, decoupling the provincial championships from the AllIreland series front and centre of his opposition. He admitted that if, as is very likely, there is no consensus on a new format and Proposal B fails to get the required 60 per cent support of delegates at Special Congress, then Leinster and other provinces will look at pushing for a round robin format within the provincial system, particularly catering for those outside of the top seeds.
‘Yes, change is coming. There is no doubt about it. It’s how that change comes is the question.’
Brian McAvoy was very much on a similar page.
That we are so late in the game though and only getting down to the nitty gritty of the bottom line now, isn’t helpful.
If Conor O’Donoghue’s €10m bonanza is ‘grossly exaggerated’ — the counter-claim of Connacht Council secretary and task force member John Prenty when I
“Debate has been reduced to the money” “Reality is that provinces are not working”
spoke to him last week — and Croke Park’s own costings ‘extremely conservative’ in the words of GPA CEO Tom Parsons, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
It’s hard to think that a radical new format which mirrors the league structure in guaranteeing every county a minimum of seven championship games could produce less gate receipts than the current provincial model – as Parsons argues: ‘The reality is the provinces are not working. They’re not fit for purpose. You don’t have to do a deep dive to realise that. Dublin have won 16 of the last 17; Kerry nine of the last 11 in Munster; Mayo seven of the last 11 in Connacht.
‘This year we’ve seen Mayo beat Sligo by 20 points, Mayo beat Leitrim by 23 points. Dublin, the brutal mismatches we’ve seen between Dublin and Leinster counties. What additional evidence do we need?’
Build it and they will come. Get the format right and supporters will flock to games — if there is a format they value and the players value.
‘Brian mentioned that if we decouple the provinces it will devalue the provinces but if we continue this, this will devalue football forever. We have enough evidence to know that our core competition in the middle of the summer needs to be our leagues. We need to look at other competitions, what’s working in clubs, what’s working in hurling — and that’s a league-based tiered system that allows competitive balance.’
That last line is a fundamental truth. The only bottom line that counts.