TV Coverage

In the regular NBA season there's 15 games per round. There's often crossover and all games available on the app.

Of the 10 Premier League games every weekend 5-6 are usually on the 3pm Saturday slot, all get broadcast, maybe not in England or Ireland but internationally they can all be picked up. Also take for example last season when the final 3 rounds were 3pm sunday kickoffs

Meh, if you are really going to go down the path of international broadcasters of the EPL then I'm out.

Clearly in the case of the GAA we are talking about host country broadcasters - and that is the EPL comparison I'm making. Sky/TNT/Amazon get unique slots where they are not clashing with a rival broadcaster. The final weekend is an anomaly, the only time they have a pre-scheduled clash. (Which interestingly won't be the case from 2025/26 when Week 38 will be one broadcaster only).

As said I don't follow NBA so don't know the regular season set-up. But why do they have these unique slots for the play-offs then? Surely every match should be at prime-time on rival networks - it wouldn't affect overall audiences at all as according to you 'each game will only ever attract 2 set of supporters'.

All Munster, Leinster and Connacht games are free to air but for arguments sake we take the free to air aspect away. Because the GAA is also only partly free to air

Every game from the URC and Champions Cup in rugby is televised and in both competitions there is regularly multiple kick-offs at certain times. At international level the November and July series regularly have the same kick-off times also

Why bring an analyst from Tyrone to Ennis for a game in Roscommon??.

Nuts.

Like, they have all the OB stuff in Roscommon anyway, the video feeds and all in the van..... Sean only does general, banal clichés anyway, so he doesn't need anything too exciting ('Oh Roscommon, Need a big performance from Enda Smith...... a few scoring forwards,... Lack of defensive system..... Yadayada')

GAA Go has been a disaster in terms of promoting GAA and the new early start to the championship season has been a disaster aswell.

Too much of the championship now collides with the soccer and rugby seasons which are the GAA's major competition for casual fans and championship has always been about attracting the casual fan.

There could easily have been 2 hurling matches on terrestrial television on Saturday and if RTE can't broadcast the then fine but I'm pretty sure TG4 would have been more than happy to broadcast the hurling on Saturday and it would have definitely attracted a much bigger audience than what GAA Go is getting.

Yes the GAA has lost its edge moving from the summer months.

As you rightly say its now clashing with many other sports, the Premier League, European Cup Rugby, Champions League.

GAAGO picture quality is garbage, it might be acceptable for football with a bigger ball but certainly not hurling.

In my opinion, the Championships should be starting this weekend. Summers as a child were about going to Championship games for many these days their county are out are the championship before they even their school holidays. But it is what it is, it’s hard to see it going back at this stage.

Its nothing to do with being in competition with RTE. TG4 don't have the money to bid on the rights to the championship which are sold at a premium to the rights TG4 have. Even if they did they'd probably struggle with the production costs.

RTE as is well publicised also don't have a lot of spare cash.

The most realistic way for more games on free to air TV is increased government funding for RTE/TG4 which they would then transfer to the GAA for extra rights to additional games and spend on production costs. Makes little or no sense.

None of the rants on social or mainstream media answer the question of who will cover the cost of the extra coverage everyone wants to see. Micheal Martin, when lamenting why Cork are not on TV, never mentions how his government control the purse strings of the only two free to air broadcasters interesting in producing match day content.

I didnt say they were. TG4 operated a surplus of €12k in 2022. How many extra matches would that get them?

But the players the people who sacrifice so much for people to be entertained are generally in favour the current format, club players finally have certainty to over when games will and won't be on and can plan other elements of their lives accordingly.

• Poor and uneven competition structures, made worse in recent years by an increasing number of games.
• Lack of promotion of games in midweek.
• Lack of player/manager engagement with the media.
• Non-existence of 10-15 minute highlights packages on social media after matches.
• Very few Saturday evening review shows.
• No mandatory midweek/Friday evening magazine show included as part of TV rights.
• GAAgo not being available as a subscription channel on Sky.
• No best 7 Goals/Points/Saves/Tackles/Bits of Skill flooding social media on a Monday morning.
• And while the sports at their best are great, but the possession game in both codes leaves a lot of boring fare and nees to be tackled to make a better spectacle (hurling badly needs to clean up as well, it's a cheating festival at times).

All of which if tackled would go a hell of a long way to putting the games front and centre and more available to people.

The way things are, we're going to be in competition with other sports regardless of the time of the year. Look at this summer, between the Euro's, the Olympics, tennis, golf, racing, there's going to be sport constantly on the telly through the summer. The problem isn't competing with other sports, it's the pure 5hit-show that is the competition structures and the criminally and disgracefully poor promotion of the games on our own end.

Take the highlights package for example. The Sunday Game is poor enough at times, and there more talking than matches, but they can't show everything either. Why aren't we seeing a 10-15 minutes highlight packages put on YouTube showing all the scores from play, a handful of the frees, the red cards, top saves and other significant moments. You need only show 10-15 seconds of a point. Say about 15 minutes of highlights package for every game. Stick it on YouTube, and let people watch them at their leisure during the week. They have the camera's at the matches, what's the point in having them there and just filing the footage away? Utter madness at this stage, when other sports have been doing it for well over a decade now.

We need to sort our own 5hit out first before we start complaining about losing the summer, GAAgo or poor crowds. Do that and we'll have the crowds and the attention of sports fans.