On the OUTSIDE looking in
Sky deal casts cloud over the have-nots in two-tiered GAA
Retaining subscribers is the priority for pay-per-view broadcasters
It is in the GPA’s interest for Croke Park to get the best deal possible
SKY will show two Championship matches over the June Bank Holiday weekend. On Saturday, June 3 they will broadcast the Leinster football quarterfinal between Dublin and the winners of Wexford and Carlow, their first Championship match of the season.
The following day, they show the Munster hurling semi-final between Clare and Limerick. Missing the chance to watch their team handily beating a provincial minnow on the Saturday evening of the long weekend is unlikely to upset too many Dublin supporters who are not subscribers to the broadcaster.
Expect greater clouds of dust to be kicked up over the Clare-Limerick game. It will be the second hurling blockbuster of the summer, and when news of its place within the Sky portfolio for this season was revealed in the Examiner in March, disgruntlement was quickly apparent on social media.
The frustration will go mainstream when the date draws closer and people realise they will have to go to Semple Stadium, visit the pub or sign up to Sky to see the game.
And the latest eruption of indignation and anger from critics of the agreement between the GAA and a pay-per-view broadcaster will bubble into public view. Croke Park will, meanwhile, defend it.
But many will ask a question that remains intriguing: just why do the GAA authorities sell a part of the rights to show their Championship matches to Sky?
The question has been asked since the first deal between the parties was made in 2014, but it remains current today.
Opportunities to probe the issue were notably absent on the announcement of the latest GAA media rights deal last December. The agreement was confirmed, not at a press conference attended by broadcasters, officials and star analysts as with the previous deal in 2014. Instead, on Friday December 9, a fallow time of year for the GAA and many of the people who report on and analyse it, a press release was issued. If the authori- ties wanted to pick a lower-key way to make public the new deals, they couldn’t have found one. RTÉ kept its rights to broadcast 31 matches on television. Sky retained rights to 20 games, of which 14 are exclusive to it. There were some expressions of surprise that TV3 had been overlooked. They lost out to Sky in 2014 and the expectation was they would be determined to regain access to valuable Championship matches.
The nature or extent of their engagement or that of Eir, another subscription broadcaster, was never ascertained. Nor was the value of the arrangement, which, unlike its predecessor which ran for three years, is for five years’ duration, starting this summer.
The GAA’s overall deal covering TV and radio rights was estimated at between €70 million and €80 million in total for the five years. Industry sources consulted for this article disputed the likelihood of the rights being worth €16 million per annum.
The last deal was said to be worth just over €11 million a year, and a figure of €14 million per annum for the new agreement is thought to be more credible. Sky, having rights to a third of the more valuable television package, could expect to pay up to €4 million a year under such an arrangement.
And why they would want to do so is obvious – subscribers.
The viewing figures they attract in Ireland and Britain for their broadcasts are not officially published and estimates have been disputed, but critics insist they are in the low tens of thousands.
However, one source says viewing figures are not the point for Sky. The summer months are a time when the broadcaster has been traditionally vulnerable to losing subscriptions, because the Premier League disappears until midAugust. In Britain, Sky’s cricket coverage has proven a way of convincing people to keep their packages. ‘In Ireland, the Championship can serve the same purpose,’ says the source.
This is at a time when British broadcasters who have paid billions of pounds for Premier League and Champions League rights have cause to feel nervous. Last October the Daily Mail reported that Sky’s viewing figures for the Premier League were down 19 percent.
This is the first season of a threeyear agreement with the Premier League that cost Sky and BT £5 billion between them. Retaining subscribers is now the priority of all pay-per-view broadcasters in an age when access to illegal streams has never been easier. In that context, paying a few million euro a year for GAA championship rights, which could prove a way of keeping customers contracted, makes sense for Sky.
BUT what’s in it for the GAA? Money is the quick answer from their critics. It is a consideration the association have never denied plays a part in their decision-making, but the pieties about servicing the diaspora in Britain are not alluded to as frequently now.
That was one of the main features in their defence of the first deal in 2014, but as critics pointed out then, GAA fans in Britain could watch Championship matches broadcast in Ireland through a broadcaster called Premier Sports since 2009, and at less than half the price of a Sky subscription.
GAAGO has also transformed how emigrant communities can access GAA coverage – but British-based subscribers to this streaming service, a joint venture between RTÉ and the GAA, cannot access matches which are exclusive to Sky.
The diaspora defence still features in Croke Park rear-guard efforts, but another word featured prominently in GAA analyses of the new rights deal: stability.
‘I think it’s because of stability,’ said Peter McKenna, Croke Park Stadium and Commercial Director, earlier this year. ‘We have a very, very small team here in Croke Park. What we have got is stability. We know that it is now locked and secure for five years. That allows us to plan and to get ourselves ready for the next tranche.’
In his annual report for 2016, issued in January, Páraic Duffy nodded towards the emigrants but also alluded to stability in stressing the need to protect the GAA’s revenue channels.
‘First, we needed to ensure that our games would continue to be widely available on TV and radio to our domestic Irish audience and to our units abroad. Our home base of members and supporters, attached to their clubs and counties, constitute our single most important audience, while our commitment to our members abroad is unwavering,’ he wrote.
‘Second, we needed to protect the vital part of our revenue generated by income from broadcast rights. The GAA can only achieve its goals and fulfil its mission if it retains the capacity to fund the work of its clubs and units at home and abroad.’
The argument that most of the money earned from Sky eventually filters back to the core units, the clubs, is trickier to maintain than previously. Last July, the GAA announced a three-year agreement with the Gaelic Players’ Association
under which €6.2 million a year will be provided to the players’ body to fund its initiatives.
THIS caused disquiet among the sizeable GAA constituency suspicious of the GPA and their intentions. The latter body are enthusiastic supporters of including Sky in media rights agreements, and given their dependence on the GAA for millions in revenue now, it is in their interest to see Croke Park strike the best deals possible.
From the GAA perspective, their commitment to funding the GPA at a cost of millions makes the stability referenced above not merely desirable but vital. This also explains a five-year duration for the new deal, when the old one ran for three.
However, this pushes the GAA closer and closer to an existential question that has loomed for years: what is its purpose?
It cannot be expected to compete against professional sports on the island while abjuring the prospect of commercial agreements. But it has walked a tightrope for three years with the Sky deal, given that the arrangement places 14 matches each year outside the availability of the hundreds of thousands who are not subscribers.
There was a photo taken in the small Mayo town of Balla in August 2015 that became an instant sensation on social media. It depicted people seated in a living room watching Mayo play Donegal in an All-Ireland quarter final on Sky Sports. Outside, more people peered in the windows to try and see the game.
It was a funny snapshot but when the laughter receded it also provided an enduring representation of what the Sky deal meant for the type of community in which the GAA is the most powerful and important cultural force.
This is a time when the GAA is being forced by the Club Players’ Association to remember its responsibility to the thousands whose voices can get lost in the sensations created by the inter-county game. The Super 8 football restructuring next summer will heighten the feeling of an elite growing within the game.
In that context, in which the fear of a two-tier Gaelic Athletic Association is palpably manifesting itself, the Sky deal is another triumph for the haves. Justified or not, the GAA is vulnerable to that charge. Expect it to be made, forcefully, in the coming weeks.