FORMER GPA CEO Paul Flynn has labelled the introduction of a split season was “economically…an act of self-harm, the GAA’s Brexit” and that it “will hurt the association”.
Admitting that the was “indirectly complicit to a certain extent” in the decision having argued in favour of it on behalf of players, the former Dublin All-Ireland winner said that it was the foundation for Sky’s decision to step back from owning broadcast rights for GAA matches – something he calls “a terrible outcome for the GAA”.
Writing in a recent column for The Currency at the end of last month, Flynn argued that squeezing the inter-county calendar into a smaller and “less attractive timeslot” would damage viewing figures, citing the average number that watched this year’s All-Ireland football final on RTÉ as being 100,000 fewer than in 2021.
Kerry’s win over Galway was watching by an average of 862,000 people, peaking at 960,000, compared to last year’s average of 940,400 and peak of 1,064,800 viewers.
Pointing to Sky’s ability to grow sports such as the NFL and Formula 1, Flynn said that “GAA arrogance is an own goal” when it came to forcing them out of the market.
“GAA traditionalists believe the GAA belongs on our national broadcaster. That’s fine but it doesn’t need to be exclusively,” he wrote.
“Everybody benefits from competition. You can see in soccer how the emergence of Virgin with razor sharp analysts has introduced some competition for RTE. This is entirely healthy for everyone.”
Flynn, who served as the GPA’s CEO for three years between 2018 and 2021, also labelled the comments of president Larry McCarthy as “incredible” when he presented Sam Maguire to Kerry captains Sean O’Shea and Joe O’Connor saying that focus would turn to “the most important part of the GAA, the club championship.”
Four-time Allstar Flynn, who plays his club football with Fingallians, questioned whether RTÉ and the GAA will invest sufficiently in GAA GO to make the games presentable.
GAA GO, a joint GAA-RTÉ venture, will pick up much of the slack in an expanded championship programme next year. RTÉ television will broadcast the same number of games as before, and with Sky gone, the subscription streaming service will be the only place to watch many of the big championship encounters.
“The GAA has made decisions which seem to lack commercial sense,” wrote Flynn.
“Again, maybe they are doing the right thing for the Association around the country, but the decision of the GAA to exit the elite sports market for 26 weeks of the year was the foundation for all that happened with the Sky deal.
“Economically this was an act of self-harm, the GAA’s Brexit, but as somebody who argued for it from the point of view of the player when I was at the GPA, perhaps I’m also indirectly complicit to a certain extent.
“We can debate the positives and negatives of this from a club perspective again but purely from a rights holder point of view this is self-sabotage of the highest order.
“From Sky’s perspective, the GAA filled the summer schedule where there was no Premier League and a skeleton rugby schedule. One would assume the season clashing with the end of the Premier League, rugby and golf wouldn’t offer an attractive proposition and for that reason they wanted more league games to stretch their season out.
“People pay monthly for Sky so ideally they have sport 12 months a year. If it is condensed, Sky are going to want more.
“The negative narrative of Sky that was advanced, mainly by the traditionalists who were wedded to the RTE parody show with Brolly, O Rourke et al, couldn’t still be thinking that this is a good move for the promoting GAA or that it is progressive for the overall association.
“Within the GAA, the commercial team are progressive and are more qualified in broadcast rights than most commentators on this deal, but from my experience I know they do not have a free hand on all commercial decisions. It is not always about expanding the pie
“Traditionalists or romantics may be protecting what they believe the GAA represents, even if the pie gets smaller.
“For many, the club is king, but there has been no talk of anyone scrambling for the rights to club games which demonstrates that it matters locally, but not one game really amounts to anything that generates interest on a national level,” he argued.
Flynn concluded the piece saying that the decisions “that seem to aim at reining in the inter-county game rather than growing it will have long term and short term consequences that will hurt the association.
“But if you believe in the fairytale, then none of that matters,” he wrote.
