The GAA are already at an "advanced stage" of the negotiation process in awarding the contracts for the domestic broadcast rights of its matches.

RTÉ has long held the exclusive rights to domestic GAA broadcasts, but its most recent three-year contract expires at the end of this season's championship, and the emergence of Setanta Sports has for the first time created genuine competition for such broadcast rights.

Neither RTÉ nor Setanta are disclosing details of their current position in the negotiation process, but the GAA have confirmed talks have been going on for some time.

The last three-year deal with RTÉ involved exhaustive negotiations that lasted several months and only concluded on the eve of the 2001 championship.

"Talks have been going on for some time," said the GAA's chief press officer, Danny Lynch. "And, in fact, they would be at a fairly advanced stage.

"And talks with RTÉ would always be ongoing. Obviously, no agreement has been reached yet and it wouldn't be our number one priority at the moment until after the All-Ireland football final, but we certainly envisage the whole thing concluded before the end of the year."

When asked if Setanta were a part of the current negotiations, Lynch simply replied that, "Yes, they are a factor".

The GAA have in recent times always sought a three-year contract, which is the industry standard for broadcasting rights for major sporting events. Such a timeframe on this occasion, however, is not yet certain.

"No, that is not guaranteed to be the case," indicated Lynch.

Setanta Sports is still a developing force in the television sport since its recent launch on the Irish market. Carried by ntl, it plans to have daily broadcasts from January. It currently holds the overseas and Internet broadcast rights of GAA matches and is now seen as an inevitable rival to RTÉ for at least part of the domestic broadcast rights.

According to Niall Cogley, the recently appointed chief executive at Setanta and formerly head of sport at RTÉ, the GAA is clearly a part of the plans.

"Obviously, the GAA is the most popular sport in the country," he said. "And of course we would want to be a part of that."

RTÉ have indicated their strong desire to hold on to their GAA broadcast rights, something that has become one of the first challenges for the station's new head of sport, Glen Killane, formerly their executive producer of Gaelic games.

Their press officer Richie Ryan described a renewal of the contract as an "absolute priority".

It is still unclear, however, exactly how the GAA intend on distributing the rights. One of their options would be to parcel out the rights in different packages, something similar to what is done with the Champions League in soccer. RTÉ and Setanta are currently sharing the rights for the weekend Premiership matches in England.

And the market itself has changed yet again since the GAA were last negotiating their contracts in 2001. On that occasion, it went through a tender process for the first time, and also put together packages and invited people to tender for individual packages as well as the overall rights.

It was only on the weekend of the GAA Congress in April 2001 when it was eventually agreed that RTÉ would again have exclusive rights to GAA activity over the following three years on television and on radio.

While Setanta may be keen to get their hands on at least some championship action, any major change in the current broadcast agreements will ultimately depend on how the GAA want their games relayed on television.

It is known that they welcome competition in the area, but it remains to be seen if they also willing to shift towards the pay-per-view scenario associated with the more exclusive deals of nonterrestrial television.

Setanta, however, say that they have no plans to make the sports channel a pay-per-view or subscription package.

It is also likely that the negotiations will include the question of player availability, similar to the attempts made by RTÉ last time out to build guaranteed interviews into any new three-year contract for broadcast coverage.

Although TV3's ability to compete for the domestic rights has improved in recent years, they are still not seen as genuine competitors for the GAA broadcast rights because of the large amount of production work required.