GAA Go

Sky wasn't so bad when they had the 24 hour pass on NowTV. Then you didn't need a dish and you could often get two games for the €10 fee.

GaaGo could then cover more games, there were many games with no coverage whatsoever. There should exist an annual pass with additional coverage of games, not so much to make a load of money as to serve the GAA community.

Also GAAGo fail the overseas audience from this time of year on. There will be club games on TG4 and RTÉ in the autumn, these are geoblocked, yet GAAGo do not make them available. Who thought that was a good idea? Either remove the geoblock or put them on GAAGo.

The idea of Amazon covering a few games is interesting. You could get prime for a month for less than one GAAGo game. The problem is though that you don't want the games all over the place.

Sky would probably want exclusive rights to games and BBC currently show a lot of Ulster games. What was the story the last time Sky had rights had BBC games?

But loads of people already have Sky packages so not sure there would be any increase for most people.

But that was already the case when Sky first obtained rights to show GAA matches - lots of people already had Sky packages then too, but all the uproar was over "the poor old people who don't have Sky and who can't afford it".

Then the games moved to GAA GO and it was all about "the poor old people who don't have broadband and who shouldn't have to pay for it just to then be able to pay extra to watch a GAA match".

Even if GAA GO showed all its matches online for free, you'd still have complaints about it.

Some won't be happy unless every match is shown on free-to-air TV. That remains unlikely to happen, unless Virgin Media becomes willing to do some broadcasting work itself, or TG4 ponies up more money than anybody thinks they have.

I honestly don't know why you find that hard to believe. Who would have shown that Limerick v Cork match, if it hadn't been for GAA GO?

No broadcaster - including RTE - properly expressed an interest in acquiring the rights to what would have been "the Sky matches" when the Sky deal ended, and the GAA can't force any broadcaster to show any match. That left them in a position where they had to come up with an alternative solution. They looked at the streaming model which was proving successful in many counties for their club matches, and came up with something similar. The only "mistake" (if you see it that way) was to enter into partnership with RTE rather than somebody else to do so, because of the questions that have arisen since then.

But my question to you remains the same - who do you think would have shown Limerick v Cork, if GAA GO didn't exist?

P.S. - by the way, funny how the detractors criticise the GAA from both sides. Some say they're rich enough that they should be able to give away broadcasting right for free if no TV station is willing to pay the asking price. Then you come along and say that they're broke and desperate for money. It can't be both!

I think you are missing a bigger point that RTE own GAAGO, it's in their interest to put the bigger games behind a paywall so they can make more money off it…

If GAAGO didn't exist do you think that RTE and the GAA would allow 3 Munster Hurling games involving Cork, including Cork V Limerick, and 2 Leinster games involving Kilkenny go without being televised at all?

Exactly. No obvious change if it goes to Sky Sports. The gripes might be the same but it won't make life any more difficult for the majority of people.

There are 2 RTE deals, one involving RTE through their shares in GAAGO. If GAAGO didn't exist there would either be more than the 31 games on RTE or maybe another broadcaster would pick the remainder up. There is no chance that the Limerick/Cork and Dublin/Kilkenny games would simply not be not shown as they are worth a fortune in advertising to whoever shows them. GAAGO is the only way of watching the championships abroad, there is no doubt it is already massively profitable

To use a football perspective I also doubt that 2 of the All Ireland Quarter Finals would simply not be shown.

What actually happened here is people got pi$$ed off and the politicians reacted similarly. As a lot of taxpayers money goes to the GAA the politicians reaction is a good one

Not sure how to quote just one line from a post but want to refer specifically to this line from yours: "If GAAGO didn't exist there would either be more than the 31 games on RTE or maybe another broadcaster would pick the remainder up."

You're still missing the point that GAA GO exists because neither RTE nor any other broadcaster wanted to "pick those games up" in the usual way.

I'm not about to explain it any more. None so blind, and all that…