VIRGIN Media and TG4 have been handed an opportunity to return the Championship to free-to-air television and muscle GAAGO out of the market after the GAA put the domestic rights held by the RTÉ/GAA joint-owned venture out for tender.
A GAA advertisement has appeared in a number of newspapers this morning “inviting expressions of interest for the media rights of specific domestic broadcast packages for the GAA Championship.”
The move was recommended by Ireland’s consumer watchdog, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), following an examination into GAAGO’s expansion.
The streaming service has held rights for the last two seasons to the championship packages previously held by Sky TV.
GAAGO has been mired in controversy over its pay-per-view model and its joint-ownership model between the GAA and primary rights holders RTÉ.
The CCPC determined that the GAA should put the domestic rights to broadcast in Ireland out to tender at the end of the deal’s second season, in the middle of the broadcasting contract that was agreed in 2022.
Agreements held by RTÉ and BBC around the broadcasting of championship games are not affected.
GAAGO are certain to bid to retain what they hold and given the recent public backing of GAA president Jarlath Burns for the scheme, it would be a surprise if they do not hold on to the deal.
A row broke out last summer when Virgin Media claimed that the GAA had not approached them about acquiring the rights when Sky left the market.
“The question must be asked, did RTE pay anything for these rights or did they just agree to keep them behind a paywall to drive incremental revenues for both partners in GAAGO, i.e. RTÉ and the GAA,” read the Virgin statement.
The GAA quickly hit back, saying Virgin’s statement “contained several factual errors and misleading comments”.
The association said that they had contacted Virgin as early as February 2021 to “gauge their interest” and followed up with meetings, calls, emails and exchange of documents but that they received no formal bid or expression of interest.”
Virgin’s preference, the GAA claimed, was for ‘ready to go’ packages that did not require them to set up an outside broadcast.
Their current deal with the FAI for Republic of Ireland’s soccer internationals involves Virgin being provided with footage rather than using their own cameras.
It remains to be seen whether the opportunity now presented to them will force a change in that approach.
In May this year it was also claimed that TG4 had wished to bid on the packages awarded to GAAGO.
The GAA also responded to that by saying that it was their understanding the Irish language broadcaster could not afford to bid for the games and that they were not prepared to “give away our rights for free”.
There is the possibility that the GAA could also decide to launch their own streaming service that would replace GAAGO entirely.
After two years of the joint venture, there has been a notable shift towards in-house media and the idea of the GAA streaming its own games has long been mooted.
Such a service would be pay-per-view and would not alleviate the criticism around the removal of some games from free-to-air broadcast.
Virgin and TG4 will at least consider the idea of applying, although they had just six days to submit an expression of interest, with the deadline set for Monday, August 12 at 5pm.