THE GAA will be heavily reliant on state funding to get through 2021 – but are confident they will bounce back from the worst financial year in their history.
Yesterday’s annual report revealed record losses of €34.1m for the year, with revenues dropping by 57 per cent and leaving the black hole the association had feared for the past year.
With finance director Ger Mulryan saying that he expects the 2021 figures to be roughly in line with last year’s, the GAA is facing a sustained period of belt-tightening over the coming years.
Central Council recorded a loss of €15.6m and Croke Park stadium lost €10.2m, with the injury fund (€1.3m) and provincial and county boards (€8m combined) making up the total loss.
Total revenue dropped to €34.1m, predominantly due to the absence of gate receipts, which were down to just over €3.5m from a record €36m in 2019.
The absence of spectators from games is, unsurprisingly, not something that Director General Tom Ryan expects to see change in the near future.
“I’ve no particular expertise or insight over anybody else so all I’m giving you is a lay view of things,” he said.
“I don’t think we will have grounds at full capacity, it’s hard to see anything anywhere near that.
“You remember last year there was a brief period when we were allowed to have a few hundred people at club matches. That’s hopefully within the scope of the country to deliver and for us to implement.
“I don’t foresee 80,000 at an All-Ireland final.”
What kept the GAA sustainable in 2020 was the intervention from the government, who funded the organisation’s running to the tune of €18.5m.
Ryan admitted that having to knock on their doors made it “a difficult place to be” given the GAA’s history of self-sustenance, but said they will need significant state aid again in 2021.
“Usually, we always take pride in the fact we’re self-sufficient so it really is a difficult place to be at the moment to be reliant on external assistance.
“There are certain things we can try and do for ourselves and it’s around trying to salvage revenue where we can. We were very fortunate this year - a lot of our sponsors and commercial partners were very good to use likewise on the broadcasting front.
“We don’t give up. We try and get as much as we can in terms of whatever revenues are there and salvageable.
“We try and manage our costs as best we can but uncomfortable as it is to be saying it we will be dependent to a certain extent on external assistance from the state again, there’s no point in misleading people about that.”
The GAA had never planned to be back playing games just yet but the news early last week that their ‘elite level’ status had been downgraded by the government came as a major surprise to all.
A letter to county secretaries after that discovery indicated that it would likely be at least Easter before they could now consider the resumption of activity.
Given the shortening window, the viability of the Allianz Leagues has been called into question and while Ryan conceded is “under the most pressure” but “if we can do it at all, we’d love to do it”.
“Obviously as you start pushing things back, a week here, a week there, it's all cumulative. It does mean that you have to look at alternatives.
“We have alternatives already considered. There's really no point airing those now. All we know for definite is most of them are going to turn out to be obsolete and defunct anyway.
“Just think of last year at short notice we were able to decide what we were going to do, we are able to communicate it, we were able to plan it and we were able to get it up and running.
“Whatever shape the thing takes this year, we will do the same. I do think we have to be realistic too.”
There have been suggestions that flipping the seasons and putting club games first would give the GAA better hope of recouping some losses if supporters could attend inter-county games later in the year.
Asked if there was a cut-off point where the two could be flipped, Ryan said: “There's not really.
“It's just a question of making sure you're ready to go. The thing about the club side of things really, that would call for a far more accommodating public health scenario because you're talking about hundreds of thousands of people at that stage.
“I do understand we've a huge responsibility to those people too. The reason we were going with county first was we really did anticipate that was the element that was going to be most practical to implement because it was a smaller number of people.
“I still think that's probably the case. I don't foresee that changing in the next couple of weeks, next few weeks. But they're probably will come a time when we'll have to consider all the options ahead of us and make a call on things.
“But at the moment the plans that we announced around about Christmas time are still the ones we'd like to implement if we can."
