What are you comparing it to? Netflix? It’s a tiny platform in the grand scheme of things. Won’t reach the same levels of reliability. Even DAZN or HBO have lots of delivery problems and they are operating at 500 to 1000 times the scale.
I’ll just say that I have never had any issues with GAA Go in terms of getting it to work or streaming quality and I have used it with patchy enough internet connections too.
I do understand the frustrations of people and it’s definitely not easy for older people, a couple of my own relatives, but there are way more Championship games than before.
The easiest way to be able to broadcast as many matches as possible is to just have less matches. Is that what people want? While the round robins in hurling have been a success, they unequivocally have not in football (and were never ever going to with 3 teams qualifying from the group).
We could go back to 2 matches & out, I know people here have been calling for it. There probably wouldn’t be much need for GAA Go then and you’d have your long breaks for everybody. Still wouldn’t solve the curse of the intercounty manager; you’d still have the few loonies holding the players in their prison camps and would actually make the overall experience less enjoyable for players.
Welcome to split season, microwave championship. It is all about fixture fulfillment now and cramming matches in wherever they can. There’s no promotion any more, sense of occasion, build up or anticipation. The matches come so thick and fast across all grades that nobody can keep up. It’s just a box ticking exercise now.
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Less matches is the way to go.
Munster needs to break away.
That’s fucking bullshit
The problem with GAAgo is Its inacessible to certain demographics. We were down in West Clare for the weekend. I’ve a season pass and could watch Tipp game on my phone with less than ideal broadband in the place we were staying. But had no HDMI or casting option which meant none of other 5 or 6 people could watch it. So we tried McGanns and McDermotts pub in Doolin and neither of them had it. We eventually found McMahons in Ennistimon had the pass. At least with Sky you knew most places would have it. The quality of broadcast would be good and its not compromised by poor internet and being miles behind the live radio. GAAgo has all the hallmarks of another grubby little RTE deal. Next Saturday the biggest market in GAA - Cork will have their 3rd munster championship match behind a paywall.
GAAgo was just another way of increasing the TV licence fee by stealth. And like anything attached to RTE it is really sub standard quality.
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Less games, more podcasts
Could they not get GAA Go on Sky to add as an additional paid channel, like every other sports channel.
If there isn’t a match, it’s just the Munster Final 2004 on repeat.
Probably not possible with saorview. Does Saor view do apps?
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How difficult would it be (licence, costs etc.) to create GAAGO as a subscription channel instead of streaming?
Obviously a lot of people were against Sky Sports having rights but at this point I reckon people would accept paying for GAAGO as a TV subscription add on.
I think when there’s an option not to have sky then people would give less of a shit
Exactly, particularly if it was a one off charge of 100 quid for the season rather than being tied into a more costly monthly sub all year.
I miss the twee Joe.ie articles giving us Tommy from Basingstoke’s and Ian from Newark-on-Trent’s reaction to the weekend’s stick stick action.
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Probably clashing with the co federations cup opening ceremony on the Sunday.
Somebody told me the all Ireland hurling final is starting the same time as the 2026 World Cup final. I dunno were they just winding me up though.
It would be typical if Cork’s first 3 games are on GAA Go, only for a potential dead-rubber in the final round against Tipp to be broadcast live on RTÉ. Given the volume of underage games available on YouTube and Clubber now it’s frustrating that a larger volume of senior games aren’t broadcast on a service like GAA Go. Say the likes of Tipp v Wexford in the Tailteann Cup or some of the league games.
It’s an awful pity he didn’t get a smack of the sliothar. That would’ve forced a retake. He wouldn’t have risked life and limb in front of an Anthony Nash penalty 10 years ago.
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JP will get on to FIFA and have it moved back
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Fogarty Forum: Munster is the envy of the GAA
The appeal of the Munster Hurling Championship is not being replicated elsewhere.
Halfway through the Munster senior hurling championship and its appeal shows no signs of waning.
Yes, the combined attendance figure of 114,310 is over 20,000 down on last year but the smallest venue of Walsh Park won’t be utilised over the remaining three weekends and four of the five remaining fixtures are staged at 40,000-plus capacity stadia.
That total will be augmented this weekend when a bumper crowd take in what has proven to be the most popular fixture, Cork and Limerick, set for SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Saturday evening.
By Friday last, 27,000 tickets had been sold for a game Cork simply can’t afford to lose. Munster Council officials believe by the end of the week it will be close to a 45,000 sell-out, which would be a record for a GAA game at the stadium since its reconstruction.
The Saturday evening throw-in and the fact the game isn’t on TV are pull and push factors in favour of it too. When the round-robin structure began in 2018, staging games on Saturday evenings had worried the Munster Council. Not anymore.
Next year, a first Munster SHC final that isn’t a replay will be staged on a Saturday evening. Having seen so many flock to evening championship games these last couple of seasons, a deal was done with Leinster last year to alternate their provincial deciders on the weekend days in early June.
A 40,000 crowd this Saturday would send this year’s crowds almost 6,000 higher than 2023 after three rounds. A win for Cork and Thurles will be thronged for their final-round clash with Tipperary the following Sunday. On the same afternoon Cusack Park will be packed to the rafters for the latest instalment of Brian Lohan versus Davy Fitzgerald.
Considering Walsh Park was available again and Waterford are no longer staging home games in FBD Semple Stadium, it hadn’t been expected that last year’s total attendance number of 310,440, accompanied by the hefty €5,391,814 in gate receipts, would be challenged. However, that is a possibility if Cork pick up their first win.
Ahead of Limerick, they are the cash cows of the championship. Last week, Kieran Shannon wrote in this newspaper that in terms of sheer entertainment Cork has been better to the round-robin than the format to the county. The same applies in readies.
Clare’s sustained success in the group has most certainly put bums on seats but Cork are the reliables. Their size and their yearning is lucrative. From a fixture that attracted 24,490 and 20,834 to Ballintemple in 2018 and ’22 respectively, the crowd for last Sunday week’s Cork-Clare meeting there climbed to 36,841.
That sort of appeal is not being replicated elsewhere, certainly not in Munster football where it might have been assumed a Clare-Kerry final in Ennis would have drawn a much larger crowd than the previous encounter in Limerick 12 months ago. However, there were 440 fewer souls in Cusack Park on Sunday.
In Salthill, 19,193 took in the Galway-Mayo Connacht final. Ten years ago, the last time the counties faced off for the Nestor Cup in normal times, there were 26,738 in Castlebar. The total attendance for Connacht’s four games in Ireland (ie. excluding New York vs Mayo) was 41,874, down from 53,822 last year when their total gate receipts were less than €1.3 million.
Seven days earlier, barely over 20,000 were in attendance for the Leinster SFC semi-final double-header, a statistic in keeping with the steady decline of the competition. Wexford could yet buttress the gate receipts for its hurling championship but a 9,621 attendance at the Galway-Kilkenny game in Pearse Stadium was terribly low. When split among 13 counties, €4.28m total gate receipts in 2023 doesn’t compare to the dividend the Munster’s sextet receive.
lster’s sum crowds for their seven SFC matches thus far is less than 75,000 and approximately 10,000 down on last year. Sunday’s Armagh-Donegal showdown in Clones is unlikely to make up for the shortfall from last year when they accrued shy of €2m in gate receipts and streaming income.
In the three other provinces where football is the crowd-puller and money-maker, the intimidating presence of the All-Ireland series, not to mention the cramped scheduling, has obviously impacted attendances. That there have been ticket price rises haven’t gone unnoticed by supporters either. Munster has increased admission too but their leading product sells.
To Munster, Ulster in particular would have looked with envy as Kerry sauntered into the All-Ireland SFC series. Now they, Connacht and Leinster peer over with green eyes at just how the southern province is coining it as they struggle.
Half of Munster’s blue riband competition might be played behind the relative privacy of a paywall but as long as people attend and the money flows not too many will care. For the 50-day duration of their senior hurling championship, they will make hay, the gate receipts the equivalent of over €100,000 a day.
There are winners and there are losers, as Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s soon-to-be resident Bruce Springsteen might say. Only in the GAA’s case the winners are literally south of the line.
There’s no doubt that the round robin has rekindled interest in the Munster Championship because of its competitive nature; you now have to go well in it to progress whereas under the old system, a lot of teams were happy enough to go through the backdoor (the few All Irelands won by Munster teams between 2006 & 2017 were by teams who didn’t even make a Munster final).
The reason is fairly simple though; 5 teams of a decent-ish standard playing home & away and 2 have to be knocked out. The local rivalries do help a bit but it needs all the teams to be somewhat competitive.
Leinster is a weird one because it has actually been competitive but, in reality, it is of a lower quality. If there was real jeopardy of Kilkenny ever not making the top 3, that would help, I think. And attendance-wise, Leinster needs Wexford going well. Galway aren’t a Leinster team at the end of the day, and there is nearly always one whipping boy. If Dublin didn’t always roll over for Kilkenny while putting it up to Galway & Wexford, that would probably help too.
Results-wise, the Leinster hurling results this year are probably as good as they could possibly to maximise interest.
In the football, the guaranteed backdoor has killed the provincials even more than they already have been. And the round robin with 3 teams from 4 just kills tension.
I heard a few people (mainly Cork people last year) saying that the Munster Championship should have 4 teams progress because it’s unfair that Leinster is so weak in comparison. But that would immediately kill all that is good about the new system. At the end of the day, if you can’t come 3rd out of 5, do you really deserve another go?
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Once we get Dublin out of Leinster, watch the Leinster Football Championship come alive.
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What a terrible article.
Pitting codes and provinces against each other.
Attendances can fall off a cliff very quickly in Irish sport.
Wexford attendance pitiful at the weekend.
6,000 odd.
Split season but Wexford isn’t a hurling county really so to be expected I suppose.