Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
League is just the ticket for serious investment..
THE figures that emerged from the GAA’S financial report during the week were mind-blowing.
For 2017, the total income centrally came to €65.5m, an increase of almost 10% from the previous year.
With changes coming in the hurling and football Championships this summer, I have no doubt the numbers will be even better in 12 months’ time.
The main driver of the increase was gate receipts, which rose by €4m to €34m. It’s impressive, but even more so when you think of the ongoing neglect of the Leagues.
As I always say, it’s the fairest competition in the GAA and the most important one for many counties given that it’s the most accurate barometer of progress for them.
Yet, out of that €4m increase, only €400,000 of that came from the Allianz Football League and just €100,000 from the Allianz Hurling League.
While they’d never admit it, the Leagues are the forgotten competitions in the GAA’S eyes. They don’t put anything like what they should behind it.
You’d barely have know the competitions started last weekend. There was little or nothing done locally in counties to promote them.
The League is the single biggest untapped revenue stream in the GAA. The Championship takes care of itself but counties have a run of guaranteed home games in the League and little is done to publicise them. Crowds are embarrassingly low in places.
Why not use some of the extra money now sloshing around to get into schools and clubs and encourage children to get out and support their heroes at the weekend?
The likes of the Tyronedublin and Mayo-kerry games tonight take no selling given that they’re last year’s All-ireland semi-finalists but so much more could be done from Division Two down.
You have a situation where Dublin get €1.3m for games development, a million more than the likes of Meath, Cork and Kildare. Why not put some of that money into promoting the game in weaker counties during the League?
For the counties that can’t even scrape a thousand people at a League game, imagine getting them up to 3,000, or for those that are at that level, imagine getting to their crowds to 5,000 or 6,000.
Another venture that would make League games far more attractive is if every county had the facility to stage them at night time. It’d cost relatively small change out of the €65.5m to install floodlights in the county grounds that don’t have them. Everyone loves Saturday night games, players and supporters alike.
Everything looks better under lights. It generates much more interest.
Right now, only for the die hard fans there’d be hardly anyone at some games. I live a mile from a county ground but you wouldn’t know it was staging games unless you went looking for it.
The bonanza that the GAA is currently enjoying should be used to leave a real legacy by getting people out to games in the lower divisions of the League.
There are 289 games from January to March at a time when these games are crying out for promotion, yet just 29 from July to September.
It’s a crazy imbalance and the lack of promotion of the League is an insult to the players who put in such an effort in those dark and dour winter months.
But the will to change it meaningfully just hasn’t been there.