PROMOTER IS SPINNING FAIRYTAYLS
Croke Park chief Pete comes out swinging and rejects claims HQ priced itself out of Katie fight
CROKE Park’s Peter Mckenna said he feared a repeat of the chaos that marred the Euro 2020 final at Wembley if there was any compromise on security for a Katie Taylor-amanda Serrano fight.
The bout is now set to take place at the 9,000 capacity 3Arena on May 20 instead of GAA headquarters after promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom said that “the cost of hire and everything involved in the event is three times higher nearly than staging it in Wembley Stadium”.
However, Croke Park stadium director Mckenna (right) said that “the costs quoted are far less than we’d normally charge because we would have loved to have had Katie Taylor” and he suggested that Hearn and Matchroom got “a little bit of the jitters” after fearing that the fight wouldn’t clear in excess of 80,000 tickets to fill Croke Park.
He said: “They have been in conversation with us for some time. The last time we talked to them properly was before Christmas. We would love to have the fight here. We set our stall out on that basis. So our rent was coming in around €400,000. I think the rent for Wembley is about £250,000/300,000.
“The real issue here is about security costs which we felt the promoter should carry and having gone through this with statutory services and our own team, we looked at the risk analysis on the event and we felt that the amount of security that you’d need would be at the top level and that is not inexpensive.
“So I think maybe there’s a worry there they wouldn’t quite get the attendance and also the costs associated with hosting an event at a certain standard that we would be very proud that we would hold to has caused a little bit of jitters.
“B u t I think listening to all that
Eddie was saying this morning, he was talking about a
Taylor-serrano III in
September, so I don’t even think that it’s all fully cooked in their own mind.”
Mckenna added that “we are not colossally more expensive than Wembley” and pointed to shortcomings that resulted in huge problems at the Euro 2020 final at the venue in July 2021.
“There was carnage there and a public inquiry, Baroness Casey – and I’m a nerd, I read these things in detail – was scathing on the lack of stewards, the police didn’t deploy until too late.
“Police don’t deploy for Croke Park or the Aviva or anywhere else – they’re actually here. You’re not waiting for them to arrive. So we, and I think everyone in the event industry based in Ireland, would pride ourselves on the fact that we run very, very safe events and if that costs then that’s a cost that we have to do. The eyes of the world are on us for these type of events and we’re not going to change our position on that.”