There will be no Croke Park Classic American Football game next year. Long held plans to turn last year’s successful hosting of Penn State against the University of Central Florida into a biannual affair and establish Dublin as the European Capital of College football appear to have run aground on the twin rocks of cost and lack of Government agency support.
Last year’s game attracted 55,000 fans to the game, many of them from the US and across Europe and proved a massive boost to Dublin tourism in late August. Abbey Tours managed much of the incoming audience and put it forward as one of the major highlights for mass scale event tourism the country had ever hosted.
There was controversy over the fact that the All Ireland Football semi final replay between Kerry and Mayo had to be played in Limerick because the stadium was unavailable.
Nevertheless it provided a financial boost and built a great platform for future events.
Negotiations were at a late stage between Boston College and Georgia Tech, two major teams in the college game to play here in front of live coast to coast TV coverage in August 2016.
That platform will now be dismantled as requests for Government and tourism agencies to invest risk capital of around €700,000 in promoting the 2016 event have fallen on deaf ears.
A two line statement from Croke Park last night said:
The GAA will not be hosting a proposed American Football game between Boston College and Georgia Tech in 2016.
The strength of the dollar against the euro means that the staging of the game at Croke Park was no longer viable for the Association without significant support from government agencies.
That strength of the dollar means that advance marketing and promotion would now cost 20 per cent more than was the case before and that makes it too much of a chance for the GAA to take on alone.
The irony is that the very same currency shift means that there will be a huge incentive for US tourists to come to Ireland. It’s a real shame that one major draw has now been axed.
There is of course the opportunity for the Aviva Stadium to step in and wrestle the mantle back. In 2012 the stadium hosted the Notre Dame Navy game as the launch of the Gathering and drew a similar large and high value audience.
That game was underwritten by a number of individuals, in the same manner as was being asked by Croke Park of the Government. It remains to be seen whether a repeat of such support was likely or possible.
Massive sporting events are difficult to create from scratch but when they work they can open the door to all sorts of other benefits in terms of investment and trade. The College Football ground is a rich source of the captains of industry that make decisions which will be important to Ireland.
One game does not a tradition make but the well worked out plan to put Dublin centre stage in Europe could have established a strong beacon of the sporting relationship between the two countries. London has secured the NFL relationship which is already up to three games a year and 250,000 fans at Wembley.
It’s a shame that for the want of a small investment in sports tourism, the opportunity to build something similar here will now be lost.
It’s also ironic that Government Minister Simon Coveney, speaking only this week at the launch of a collaboration between Horse Sport Ireland and the Irish Greyhound Board, expressed his observation that when you try something new in sport there are always plenty who will tell you why it shouldn’t be done.
Image Credit: Inpho.ie
