RUMOURS of the death of Gaelic football have been greatly exaggerated according to figures released by GAA finance chiefs on Tuesday.
Attendances at the 32 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship games rose 19 per cent to 553,076 in 2015 compared to 463,403 the previous year, with average crowds of 17,284 compared to 14,481 in 2014. The All-Ireland semi-final replay between Dublin and Mayo would account for some of that increase, but the figures released for hurling showed a contrasting trend.
Hurling Championship match attendance figures dropped 32 per cent from 403,434 in 2014 to 272,996 last year - although there were only 11 matches in 2015 compared to 14 in 2014. The average crowd last year was 24,818, down 4,000 on the previous season. Meanwhile, gate receipts from the Liam MacCarthy series, which were higher than their football equivalent in 2014, fell by €3.5m.
GAA president Aoghan O Fearghail said the figures for 2015 “were healthy”, even though they showed revenue had dropped by €500,000 to €56.2m. Commercial revenue rose by over €2m, but gate receipts - the lifeblood of the association - decreased from €29.4m in 2014 to €26.7m overall.
While the figures for hurling look dramatic at first glance, GAA director of finance Tom Ryan said he “wouldn’t be overly negative” about them: “It’s a function of what teams emerge over the latter stages, the quarter-finals, semi-finals, finals,” he said.
“I think it would be a bit misleading of me to expound at length about underlying trends because you may well see a complete reversal next year and perhaps a Wexford or Offaly resurgence next year would transform those league returns again.
“I think we’re comparing against 2014, which was actually the highest league returns that we had had for five or six years. Perhaps it’s setting too high a bench mark for us. I wouldn’t be overly negative about it.”
He added: “For the first time in a number of years [four], we did not enjoy the luxury of a replay in an All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final.
“But the fundamentals were such that we were able to sufficiently resource the association and able to deliver on all our financial commitments and targets. 2015 can perhaps be best characterised as a more realistic indicator of the underlying financial position of the association than the replay years that preceded. Viewed in that light, the picture is a positive one.”
Ryan said, from a financial viewpoint, he’d like to see the resurgence of teams with a strong support base in next year’s Championships. Armagh, Derry and Down would certainly tick that box as would Cork, but the Rebels failed to make the hurling semi-finals last year and also missed out on a place in the football quarter-finals.
“Probably, if you were to look at a county that would make a difference, perhaps a reversal in Cork’s hurling fortunes would make a difference to us in both competitions from a financial point of view,” he said.
“They have a very, very strong following. Limerick have been to the fore in the last three years, not so much last year, but if they were to have a positive 2016, you’d see a big uplift from that.”
The GAA hope to stage three concerts in 2016 and Ryan added that relations with Croke Park residents have improved since the fall-out over the cancelled Garth Brooks concerts in 2014: "It’s a lot better than it was say two years ago,” he said.
“Paraic [Duffy] has chaired a number of meetings with leaders from the community. We’re making very slow but very steady progress. I’d be very happy that we’re far better positioned in terms of mutual understanding in terms of the importance of Croke Park to the local community, but also a greater understanding of the imposition that Croke Park and events can have on the local community. So that understanding is a lot better.”
RYAN also admitted the GAA will have to ‘tighten its belt’ to pay for the development of Casement Park and Cork’s Pairc Ui Caoimh.
During his presentation at Croke Park, Ryan referred to the “challenges” building both stadiums would present to the GAA. But he said the association would meet them: “The amount of revenues available to us in any one year is finite. The two projects are very important... big projects and we are absolutely committed to them,” he said.
“But they are going to command quite a bit of resource from here, from the counties themselves and from the provinces that are running it. It just means our job is to make sure we don’t end up funding those to the detriment of other things that need to be funded or developed in the other 30 counties.”
