The head of VM sport gave an interview shortly after gaa go was announced and pretty much said they werenât asked of their interest.
There had been a conversation year earlier when sky extended for a year but it didnât get off the ground, but it appears that the gaa wanted a streaming/pay wall rather than another tv partner
VM Sport donât have big production crews or equipment that could go out and cover these games. It would make a loss for them, more than likely
They could have taken over the sky games - in essence that is what sky got, the tv3 games when they took over the rights
Iâm going to withdraw myself from this thread as I donât want to be saying things I regret in a fit of anger.
I still think In ten years time hurling will be in a much worse state than 2013.
The GAA slotted into a vacuum for Sky during downtime in soccer season between mid May and mid August. Less need for fillers once the GAA Championship largely transfers itâs heavy lifting to the spring and the business end of the soccer season.
But they donât have the (wo)manpower/ production gear to air live matches off their own back.
I think the GAA have massively misjudged their market. Theyâre taking them for granted. A huge part of the GAAâs TV market is the 50 or 60 plus demographic who wouldnât be particularly au fait with technology, but will tend to watch any decent match thatâs put in front of them. Iâm thinking of my oulâ fella here. Heâd have been the sort that it wouldnât particularly matter who was playing, county, club, underage grades, as long as something looked like a decent match, heâd watch it and get a kick out of it. But thereâs no way heâd have gone paying for GAAGO or even have had the knowledge of how to set it up. To people like my oulâ fella, the telly was a quasi-companion, the GAA was a companion, and the USP of GAA is that thereâs always something on on RTE or TG4, and the big stuff will always be broadcast. The USP is of the GAA for older people is that it is that friend who is always there for you, who always calls by, that you feel part of it more than professional sport, that you feel that affinity to something viscerally important, even if your own team is not involved. Accessibility = affinity. People who primarily football people still love hurling and want to watch it, and primarily hurling people still love football and want to watch it. The paywall stuff as well as the online only ticket policy, this stuff starts to break that link, it starts to push people away, to make them feel unvalued.
That paywall stuff has to be an add on for stuff that wouldnât be broadcast otherwise, not a primary modus operandi of broadcasting. With a paywall, especially an internet paywall, unless you are the Premier League you are always cutting off your nose to spite your face.
A quote I saw the other day was that support for rugby in Ireland is a mile wide and an inch deep.
Support for GAA in Ireland is a mile deep but the GAA seem to be trying to make sure itâs reduced to an inch wide.
Even if Limerick qualify, and I think they will, it is still likely to be a very competitive championship. Most of this great Limerick team are on the go since 2017, a long time in hurling. Regardless of the age profile teams do burn out and the competitive landscape is always changing. Having said that Iâd expect a strong reaction from Limerick and think theyâll beat both Tipp and Cork. Galway and Clare imo most likely to beat Limerick in knock out this year, Tipp, Cork and Kilkenny less so I think.
I bet itâs absolutely shit for half the teams in it that get knocked out first round.
Maybe they should have a championship with 16 winners and give them all a little badge with âWinnerâ written on it in marker, and a pat on the head.
Thatâs interesting. The only possible advantage is that more games are made available, even if fewer people see them. I wonder was that the reasoning.
Yup, big up front and ongoing cost to cover sports.
If I had to guess, Sky leveraged assets from the U.K. during the quieter summer months previously when covering games in Ireland.
Sports production is expensive but so is streaming. Iâm very dubious that it is going to make money given the size of the market here.
My back of the envelope calculations;
The only thing I can think of here on this is that RTĂ are using this to justify capex in streaming more broadly and are rorting costs on behalf of it. Additionally- I have not seen what the quality of the production is like but you could probably make it quite cheap to save money. The Sunday Game standard or less.
I actually think there could be questions to answer over how close RTĂ and the GGA are now & overall competition.
Thatâs a dumb post. Straight knock out was shit for most teams and most players. Only idiots want straight knock out formats brought back.
Irish racing made a similar mistake selling the rights to RUK. My old man would have watched every race live for 10 years before that incl recording it and watching it at night etc. Barring the meetings on rte now he wouldnât see a race.
The Tyrone Club Football Championship is the best Club Championship in the country as a spectacle.
All win or bust games.
The Tyrone Club League is a very prestigious competition too. Every League game is like a Championship match. Trillick have been the best team in Tyrone for around 8 years but have only won 2 Championshipâs to show for it but a scatter of League titles too.
If there waa back doors and round robins theyâd probably have 5 Championshipâs but as @Cheasty says you want to give the best teams, the least chance of winning it outright to make it a meritocracy.
Thatâs a slogan.
Being a player who loses any match is shit.
Being a player who loses four round robin matches in a row is more shit.
The trend for players opting out or going half hearted started with the qualifiers. Some teams just didnât take them seriously. They were fed up with losing twice.
You could reasonably argue that the qualifiers both diminished the provincial championships, and brought in a lot of football and hurling that wasnât very attractive to spectators. Some qualifier games were good but a lot were attended by two men and a dog.
You knew where you stood under the old system. Win or bust. The 1990s was the most democratic era in the history of the GAA because teams were moving to a relatively level playing field in terms of preparation, and there was no second chance. Teams stopped retaining All-Irelands. From 1991 to 2007, the NFL mostly operated on a more democratic system, without an eight team Division 1. Shocks were commonplace.
With the start of the second chance, it became harder and harder to catch out the strong teams, and the strong teams started to get stronger. Advantages and disadvantages increased.
Wexford won Leinster in 1997 and 2004, but both times they were beaten by Tipp and Cork. These were hugely damaging defeats for Wexford hurling, they killed the hope that had always been a hallmark of Wexford hurling. Waterford were made mugs of every time they won Munster, and could legitimately ask what the point of winning Munster at all was.
Roscommon beat Galway out the gate in Tuam in 2001, the first year of footballâs second chance, before a recharged Galway cantered past them in the quarter-final.
Soon enough, it became a cliche that the All-Ireland football championship only began on the August bank holiday weekend.
The BOX OFFICE NFL Division 1 exacerbated that dynamic of the strong and the weak.
If itâs being said that the championship only begins at the last eight stage, how does this count as success for a sport?
Round robin further increases the advantages for the strong and the disadvantages for the weak.
We may soon hear that the All-Ireland football championship only begins at the semi-final stage. In reality thatâs been largely true for most of the last decade.
This used not be true at all, every game mattered.
Round robin is great if youâre part of the gilded circle, ie. if youâre a Cork or Limerick in Munster hurling or a Dublin in football. Munster hurling has become a mini-Premier League of GAA, with Waterford as a perennial Swindon. If youâre not part of that gilded circle, itâs not so great, and itâs not so great for the sports as a whole because it increases overall predictability and diminishes the showpiece competitions.
Become part of the golden circle so you stupid fuck 
I read nearly half that but lost the will to go any further.
Hurling championship May bank holiday until mid August would be ideal as someone posted above.