Few surprises in GAA media deal but radio rights raise eyebrows

On a practical level the most significant aspect of the GAA’s new media rights deal, worth in the region of €80 million, is that it will run for five years, the longest period the association has negotiated for one of these agreements.

There were few surprises in the announcement given that the details had been comprehensively leaked a few weeks back but the confirmation of RTÉ’s acquisition of exclusive radio rights has continued to raise eyebrows for two reasons.

Firstly, after years of lamenting the absence of competition in the broadcast market and forcefully arguing that the availability of options is an important aspect of doing business with subscription television channels the GAA appears to have killed off competition in the sphere of national radio.

Secondly, the quality of Newstalk's coverage has been undisputed and has provided a healthy counterpoint to the state broadcaster's coverage. No compelling reason has been publicly advanced for the move and the radio station issued its own press release on Friday evening, through sports editor Adrian Barry.

“We believe we made a very competitive pitch to retain our live GAA commentary rights and we are disappointed that, after six years of innovative and extensive coverage, the GAA has decided not to renew that agreement.”

Financial proposals

In the absence of details we can’t really judge how “competitive” or otherwise Newstalk’s offer was and the question will inevitably arise as to the nature of the financial proposals given how well disposed Croke Park has been to Newstalk’s coverage.

"Despite RTÉ continuing to benefit from 85 per cent of the license fee," the statement continues, "today's decision begs the question as to why the state broadcaster would use state funding to purchase rights for a service that was already available to the public, free of charge, via Newstalk."

This is rather more self-serving. On that basis, RTÉ would never get to bid for rights if a commercial station were interested in them and the GAA would be back to square one. Instead, as in this case, the option to diversify media rights equally implies a choice not to diversify.

The news that Sky have secured another term of television rights wouldn’t have come as a surprise even before the new deal became public knowledge.

The matter was discussed at this year’s congress, which overwhelmingly accepted the forceful arguments of the director general Páraic Duffy that the GAA had to be free to conduct media rights negotiations on the same basis as any other commercial matter.

In his annual report Duffy had this to say: “ . . . any restriction that prohibits the GAA from engaging with all interested parties, including subscription TV providers, would seriously reduce our negotiating power and thus our ability to achieve the true worth of our assets, and would inevitably lead to a greatly reduced media-rights income.

‘Small pool’

“In what is already a small pool of potential broadcast partners, we must ensure the existence of a genuine market for our games and maintain the option of engaging with all interested parties, regardless of whether they are free-to-air or subscription providers.”

The matter remains a bit of a high-wire act all the same.

The eruption of discontent in April 2014 when the first deal with Sky was announced shocked Croke Park officials but also alerted them to the infeasibility of expanding the subscription broadcast presence.

It was also promised in Duffy’s annual report that there would be no additional championship matches given to Sky, which has been honoured.

Much of the grievance levels have been unfair on the association, which is a community-based sports organisation and not a provider of free television entertainment. It clearly has to accept the wishes of its membership on the matter but the evidence at present is that they have got the balance right.

Another affected negatively by the whole deal is Virgin Media, whose loss of the old Setanta Ireland channel (now eir Sport) means that subscribers who previously had free access to Saturday evening National League matches, as Setanta was part of the basic Virgin package, will now have to subscribe elsewhere.

GAA MEDIA RIGHTS 2017-’21

RTÉ: 31 live championship matches, including all provincial finals. Highlights programme. Exclusive radio coverage.

SKY: 14 exclusive live championship matches, including for the first time a Munster hurling match, plus rights to broadcast All-Ireland semi-finals and finals simultaneously with RTÉ.

TG4: Live national league Sunday matches. Club matches. Under-21 and minor championships.

eir Sport: Live national league Saturday matches. GAA archive matches and clip rights for mobile and internet.

BBC NI: Live Ulster championship matches.

Overseas: GAAGO streaming service. Premium Sports (US commercial premises) and Premier Sports (Britain, subject to Sky's exclusive rights to 14 matches and All-Ireland semi-finals and finals).

Radio: Existing local radio agreement continues with 20 stations around the country and Today FM and Newstalk have both been awarded score flash rights.