Clash between hurling and the World Cup final is not a zero-sum game

There is no end to the ratings war. No diplomatic solution. No territorial divvy-up that would satisfy anybody in the relentless, round-the-clock conflict. Nobody can even say where the borders lie. In the wild west of the digital universe, it’s a free-for-all: clicks, likes, views, shares, tags, traffic, dwell-time, cookies, cookie preferences, data harvesting, wall-to-wall surveillance, involuntary profiling. George Orwell would love to have invented a world like this.

The GAA sits on the outskirts of this war. They need eyeballs on screens too, but not in the same way as the big-beast, global professional sports, who are beholden to their sponsors and media partners – all of whom are sweating on an audience.

The GAA’s relationship with television, say, and all its tributaries, is more nuanced: partly commercial, partly promotional, partly public service in spirit. They can’t afford to only concern themselves with the kind of output that will be a ratings winner, they must think about niche audiences too.

To guard the home front, the GAA needed to be nimble and dynamic, and open to change. In an era when live sport on television grew into an all-you-can-eat buffet, the GAA needed to be dexterous in its scheduling, and develop new appetites in its audience.

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For a while that also meant the GAA worrying about fights it couldn’t win. At the time, the 2003 Grand Slam shoot-out between Ireland and England at Lansdowne Road seemed to represent a watershed in their thinking. The GAA swerved a head-on clash by switching a full programme of National Hurling League games from Sunday to Saturday. The build-up to the rugby match was so hysterical that every other noise was lost in the din, and the GAA was the ostrich, patted on the head as it emerged from the sand.

Once they made that call, though, they opened themselves up to years of similar stick-or-twist decisions. In 2006 they delayed the throw-in for a football League final in deference to a Heineken Cup semi-final between Munster and Leinster; four years later, when Munster were playing away in another Heineken Cup semi-final, a hurling League final was rearranged for teatime on Sunday.

This pattern continued. The Leinster council shifted a hurling championship match to avoid a clash with the Champions League final between Manchester United and Barcelona in 2011, while the Ulster Council shipped flak for not moving one of its games. But Munster played Leinster in the final of the Celtic League on the same night, without being accused of insanity. Thomond Park was packed, as you would expect.

[ Malachy Clerkin: Pitting club hurling’s best game against the World Cup final is stupid ]

The GAA came round to the view that they had nothing to gain from blinking in the face of an onrushing ratings juggernaut from another sport. So when Ireland hosted England at the Aviva on a March Sunday in 2015, they ploughed on with a full programme of National Football League fixtures, headlined by Kerry against Dublin, live on TG4.

There is a cultural subtext to all this. For decades there wasn’t a GAA fixture that couldn’t be changed. At local level, soccer matches and rugby games tended to be set in stone, but in the event of a clash over players, everyone knew that a certain class of GAA match could be moved.

Every GAA club had a fixtures shaman who could be trusted to negotiate with the relevant authority. Between GAA clubs, there was a thriving black market in good will: weddings, stag parties, christenings and sundry other life events were all regarded as legitimate grounds for a fixtures dispensation.

In recent years, the GAA has made a concerted effort to reform these attitudes. Local bylaws were tightened. The backbone of county executives were stiffened. Mercy became scarce. Master fixture lists turned into something other than a speculative first draft, and in the GAA’s new split season, these documents have become even more powerful; competition dates are locked in now and strictly assigned.

Did that lead to some unpalatable outcomes this year? Absolutely. In the middle of July the All-Ireland hurling final was forced to compete for attention with Ireland winning a Test series in New Zealand for the first time, and Rory McIlroy leading the British Open. Just a week later, the hurling final would have had an open field for coverage.

In those situations, the GAA is going to lose some blood. The concluding round of matches in the Munster hurling championship clashed with the last day of the Premier League. All of the games started at four o’clock. The last qualifying place in Munster was still up for grabs, but by 4.30 it was clear to anybody holding a remote control that the denouement of the Premier League was a far more compelling spectacle. According to RTE’s figures, the audience for both hurling games peaked in the first half and then subsided. That is the nature of the marketplace: spoilt for choice.

In the GAA’s master fixtures list, released last Thursday, the Leinster and Munster hurling championships are slated to finish on the same day in 2023, a week later than this year. But because of the World Cup, the concluding round of games in the Premier League will be a week later too, renewing this year’s scheduling clash. Take a look at the headline fixtures: Limerick v Cork, Tipperary v Waterford, Wexford v Kilkenny and Dublin v Galway. Should the GAA be afraid of a ratings meltdown? Not a chance.

It is unusual for the World Cup final to be played on a Sunday afternoon, but that was the case four years ago, just as it will be this Sunday. In 2018, the GAA took no evasive action. Limerick beat Kilkenny in the hurling championship for the first time in 45 years, in a spectacular match in Thurles, and the ill-starred Super 8s kicked off with a double-header in Croke Park. That year, the World Cup final was only the 15th most watched sports event on RTÉ; in 2014, it had been second.

This Sunday, the World Cup final will clash with the All-Ireland club hurling semi-finals in Croke Park. The GAA looked at alternatives, but there wasn’t an easy switch, and they resolved years ago not to bend themselves out of shape in the face of oncoming traffic.

So, you have a choice. Isn’t that the world you’ve signed up for?

Give us a shout when the other yoke goes to penalties.