Croke Park energy costs more than double with fuel bills up by €1.5m

The GAA is feeling the heat of current soaring energy costs. The association’s flagship stadium Croke Park has seen its fuel bill rise by €1.5 million in the past year. This represents more than a doubling in the cost of electricity and gas.

According to Peter McKenna, Croke Park stadium director, the impact of price increases has been massive since the last full pre-pandemic year’s activities.

“The stark figure for Croke Park is that our energy bill, taking 2019 as a comparable year is up one million. That’s an extra million in costs for just electricity. That will continue for the foreseeable future. Our cost base is up €1.1 million for just electricity. Add in gas, that’s a €450,000 increase. That’s nearly 1½ million in utility costs.”

Outgoings on electricity and gas now run at €1.75 million and €750,000, respectively.

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Gas is used for heating and cooking with electricity powering everything else, including floodlights, which are not the main issue when it comes to energy consumption and not connected to the mains supply.

“We run our floodlights off diesel generators,” said McKenna. “We don’t take them off the grid. Running floodlights for a match depends on the array of lights and Croke Park would have a particular array but it’s also the ancillary services that go with that: heat, lifts, lights in corridors etc.”

Green strategy

Although the costs are being scrutinised in some detail to see if further savings are possible, the fact that the stadium underwent a green audit in recent years means that the obvious savings have already been addressed.

“We were surprised by how much was still being used. The results really suggested that we do a lot of work on a business management system. As a result, we’ve a fairly good sense of where each of the circuits go now so there’s nothing residual pulling power down — someone leaving on heating or PCs.

“Even having done all of that work a few years ago as part of a green strategy, the electricity bill is still a million higher than it was in 2019. That has also been totally unforeseeable.”

Neither is a resolution of the issue foreseeable in the short term.

Whereas day-to-day stadium business can be charged more for conference services, the main business of the venue, the playing of matches, won’t take off for another six months or so and there has been no move by the GAA — whose management committee and central council control such matters — to increase ticket prices.

Nonetheless, later this month the venue will host five weekends of club matches, starting with Leinster semi-finals and ending with women’s All-Ireland finals in December.

Busy winter schedule

This initiative was started by the Leinster council 12 months ago because the quality of the Croke Park surface means that matches are all but guaranteed to go ahead, a valuable consideration in a tightly packed fixtures schedule.

The province’s club hurling and football semi-finals and finals will be played in the stadium followed by the women’s football and camogie All-Ireland finals. It’s the busiest winter schedule since two years ago when the pandemic-delayed All-Irelands were played off in November and December by the end of which the pitch was showing the strain.

“It’s cumulative usage because at this time of year there’s not a lot of growth. It’s a brand new surface, put down just after the Garth Brooks concerts so there’s a lot more resilience,” said McKenna.

Massively important

Although the matches won’t be showing a profit and in fact depend on a certain level of subsidy, the certainty they bring to the games calendar makes it a worthwhile venture, including from the stadium’s point of view.

“Do matches like this make sense on a purely commercial abacus?” he said. “You’d say not but in terms of the overall picture of what the national stadium means to club players, you’d have to say it’s massively important. In the round, it works for us. You’re not setting things against it, like depreciation, pitch costs etc. We’ll absorb them over other matches.

“As an event that we hold there, I’d say it’s important from a players’ perspective and not really interfering with our numbers.”

In England earlier this season, lower-division soccer clubs were considering the possibility of daytime kick-offs to save on energy bills.

With winter in full advance, any GAA teams left in contention are also having to cope with increased bills for the normal operation of their facilities.

At Wicklow’s launch event for the impressive new sponsorship deal with Echelon Data Centres and Beakonshaw, last week in Glendalough, Minister of State for Sport Jack Chambers reiterated Government support for clubs hit by rising energy costs, a fund of €35 million announced in the budget.