The Sunday Game / GAAGO [Split from RTE thread]

So, time to be cynical.

During the week we heard about a row in the GAA between the hurling counties (led by Wexford) and the football counties (led by Sligo) over which day (Saturday or Sunday) the All Ireland hurling quarter finals and the Tailltean Cup semi finals should be on. In the event the schedule was left unaltered.

This dominated the GAA media during the week, and what absolutely nobody was talking about was that the All Ireland SFC preliminary QFs would be all exclusive to GAAGO.

Those games produced some surprising results, with some big teams gone, and quite rightly led off The Saturday Game last night.

I don’t want to belittle the row, which may well have been A Big Thing, but it certainly distracted from some big Sam Maguire Cup games being exclusive to GAAGO while the arguably less important Tailteann Cup gets the full Sunday Game treatment later today.

I don’t think it’s the end of GAAGO; but maybe the end of GAAGO as a player in the Irish market.

Looks like this is a remedy which has been forced upon them by the CCPC who are clearly unhappy with the way this tender was originally run (indeed, if it was tendered at all).

I don’t think the conditions that caused Sky to leave have changed at all; I think if they want Sky back they’ll need to move the Championship back to its traditional May-September window. Equally VMTV have made clear their rights strategy is to buy rights that they don’t have to act as host broadcaster for, which they’d be required to do here.

Just do not mistake this for the GAA having given in or up on GAAGO or caving to public or political pressure. The only people they are caving to is the CCPC because they know they broke the terms upon which the CCPC approved the JV in the first place and/or that they know there were indeed issues with the tender process first time round (which TG4 and VMTV have both alleged).

The outcome of the process may well be GAAGo retaining the rights.

Of course they could, but they’d have to consider that in tandem with the other party in their JV, who are also the current producers of their coverage.

I do know that RTE’s URC coverage is now independently produced, even though it still features RTE Sport branding and on air talent. (The same company is also producing the URC on TG4, which is why they have identical opening titles). The point is that I don’t think RTE have philosophical objections to putting sports coverage out to indies.

No announcement yet on the retendering of the package GAAGO had been awarded.

They can’t sell any subs until they know they’ve something to sell.

What is being said on Morning Ireland this morning is that the GAA have not awarded the rights but are retaining them for themselves. That’s a slightly different matter to saying they’ve been re-awarded to GAAGO, a separate legal entity. A committee is apparently to be set up to decide how best they be utilised.

RTE report:

https://www.rte.ie/sport/football/2024/1219/1487374-gaa-exploring-purchase-of-rtes-gaago-stake/

I keep saying the comparison with NFL isn’t apt - the NFL Network offering of games has gotten worse and is now limited to the international series and a handful of late season games. And it’s been up for sale for two years and two almost done deals with Apple and ESPN respectively both fell through at the last ditch.

In other words: owning your own network might not be the holy grail the GAA seems to think it is.

As far as I know it has been confirmed for TG4 Player. The linear coverage will remain Donegal v Dublin.

https://www.irishtimes.com/sport/gaelic-games/2025/01/29/tg4-to-stream-cork-v-limerick-league-clash-on-saturday-after-gaa-give-green-light/

incidentally speaking of same, some odd stuff where the commentators seemed to be telling us there was more time left than the game clock was telling us. However it was the commentators that were correct - it seems GAAGO had not been stopping the game clock when the stadium clock was stopped - it hit 70 and the clock stopped but the game continued.

There were other graphics issues earlier in the game - the replay wipe going haywire in particular.