Powers-that-be determined that trickling stream won’t become a flood – Colm Keys,
Counties’ ambitious plans look set to be compromised by scheduling restrictions
LATE last week, county boards were sent a letter from Croke Park telling them to expect inquiries from broadcasters exploring the possibility of covering some of their games from late July through to October when most county championships are slated to be wrapped up.
TG4 have long been to the forefront of club coverage, through the autumn and winter months especially, but in the last year RTÉ has been seeking a slice of that action as part of a sub-licensing agreement with eir Sport which has already seen the national broadcaster take up some of eir Sport’s Saturday night Allianz League package over the last two seasons.
That renewed focus on club coverage now looks set to continue from next month when action cranks back up and while TG4 will reserve the first two picks of any weekend, RTÉ will still have a decent range to choose from after that. All told, the armchair viewer can look forward to an avalanche of live GAA TV action after the dearth of the last three months, four months by the time it’s up and running.
For counties, there’s a financial consideration attached if either broadcaster seeks to cover their games, €5,000 for a live match, €2,500 for deferred coverage, a standard fee paid by the GAA.
Sometimes it doesn’t pay to allow the cameras in for these games. Last year Kerry rebuffed an offer to show the county final between East Kerry and Dr Crokes live because of its potential impact on the attendance, one of the county’s big revenue-raisers in the year.
Having agreed to coverage of their quarter-finals, they noticed a decline in attendance and weighed it up that a live broadcast of a final featuring David Clifford against the 2017 All-Ireland club football champions was too good a financial opportunity to spurn.
Kerry are one of the many counties actively exploring the prospect of live-streaming some of their championship games in the coming weeks, even if restrictions on the number of spectators allowed to attend are eased further.
Kerry’s intention is to bring their games to as many as possible, including those not yet comfortable with circulating in such an environment with the threat of Covid-19 still apparent. For a small fee it could even be profitable, especially for a county with such a large diaspora across the globe keen to see the action.
Cork GAA also outlined similar plans earlier in the month, stating they were doing so “to allow the greatest possible audience for the club programme and to facilitate those who are unable to attend”.
The streaming of games at local level is being encouraged from the top for a few reasons, chiefly to offset potential restrictions on who and how many can attend by providing another outlet for viewing.
Waterford-based production company
Nemeton have developed a package that counties can avail of, costing €980 per game. Some counties are already well-established on the ‘streaming’ circuit, Mayo TV and Armagh TV to namecheck just two.
But the GAA’s streaming policy does not allow these live-streamed games to go up in direct conflict with games being broadcast by the rights-holders, in this case TG4 and RTÉ, and they have been keen to reinforce that over the last week, presenting counties with a conundrum through a compressed window that August and September especially will be.
In a note to counties, director-general Tom Ryan reminded them of that responsibility. “We are in year three of a five-year media rights cycle and the club championship package within that plays an important part in promoting our games to a national and international audience, as well as forming a significant portion of the Association’s annual revenue,” he wrote. “It is therefore of utmost importance to ensure that the integrity of these existing contractual arrangements is maintained.”
Adhering to that limits the window of opportunity for counties to develop their streaming services as TG4 and RTÉ will inevitably choose games on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons, prime time for most counties in running off their best club fixtures.
Negatively
With those two windows unavailable, counties face the prospect of foregoing streaming of games or else fixing them at times that otherwise could negatively impact on the crowd attending. As summer gives way to autumn and light fades, not all the venues where they will be obliged to stage games because of space will have floodlights to align with those times.
Financial penalties could come if any county fails to secure the necessary permission to stream games “owing to the seriousness of the many variables at play during a streamed match such as insurance responsibilities, child protection guidelines and existing national broadcast contract agreements,” the streaming policy outlines.
Some PROs and local communications committees with responsibility see this as something of a contradiction, on one hand being encouraged to stream but on the other being confined to when they can do it because of the bigger picture.