Brennan surprised at Longford's concerns

GAA PRESIDENT Nickey Brennan has expressed his surprise at the Longford County Board's concerns regarding new arrangements for stadium advertising at championship matches. The directive, says Brennan, was clear, and all counties have been aware of the new arrangements for almost a year.

Under the multi-sponsorship packages announced for football and hurling, stadium advertising for live championship matches is effectively limited to the new title sponsors - Toyota, Ulster Bank and Vodafone for football, and Guinness, Etihad Airways and RTÉ for hurling - and for all such matches most local sponsorship must be covered over.

However, the Longford board are unhappy at this arrangement, claiming they weren't fully aware of the implications ahead of hosting Sunday's Leinster football championship opener against Westmeath at Pearse Park. The matter was to be addressed at last night's monthly board meeting, but, in the meantime, Brennan was adamant the new arrangements have been well flagged.

"This comes as a surprise," he said, "because the whole sponsorship, and the broad thrust of how it operated, has been in the public arena for the best part of 12 months now. The matter has been outlined at Central Council as well.

"Hopefully, if there are still issues there, we can get them resolved in the next 48 hours. But it's important to understand as well how this works. If you take it the TV cameras are coming out from the stand, it is the two endlines, and the sideline facing the cameras, those three sides only, that will have the new sponsors' branding. This means any other branding in the ground is fine, provided it's not conflicting, and if signs need to be relocated, that can be done as well.

"But counties must understand when we took hold of the sponsorship in this way, that's one of the deliverables we have to come up with. And counties are being extremely well compensated financially for that."

Longford officials were reluctant to comment on the exact nature of their concerns. "The problem is we've been told to cover up the local advertising, and we don't want to," said secretary Séamus Quinn. "We heard the rumour all right, some months ago, that this would happen, but we'll have to see where we take it from here." County press officer John Duffy suggested they were likely to adhere: "If that is the directive from Croke Park, then it will have to be carried out."

GAA's commercial director Dermot Power explained the background to the new arrangements, which have already been in effect in Connacht and Ulster for several years under their own branding arrangements. The GAA's new sponsors effectively become the event sponsors for live broadcasts of games, and that gives them the right to the main pitch advertising.

It's a format in operation for several years for competitions such as the Uefa Champions League and the Olympic Games.

"There are two different requirements," said Power. "Whether the stadium is hosting a live match, or not. For live matches, the sponsors don't get the stadium 'clean', but 'partially clean'. This means they have the right to advertising seen on television.

"If the game is not live then it's more or less the old system, where instead of the title sponsor, who were entitled to six signs, now that will be nine signs. Croke Park itself has already been altered to accommodate this, where we only have the six signage brands of our title sponsors, other than the signs of the corporate boxes, and the GAA brand itself. You'll see the GAA brand will be much more prominent this year."

Ulster Council secretary Danny Murphy had welcomed the multi-sponsorship deal, describing it as a "sizeable advance for the GAA". Each of the football sponsors is understood to have paid the GAA €1.5 million for the right to such advertising access, and the hurling sponsors €1.1 million.