Eight years of Sky’s relationship with the GAA has come to an end with both parties reaching a mutual agreement not to renew as part of the new round of media rights being finalised by the Association.
“Despite our participation in the broadcast rights bidding process, lengthy negotiations, and a strong willingness on both sides to continue our partnership, Sky and the GAA have been unable to reach a renewal agreement,” said Sky Ireland CEO, JD Buckley in a statement yesterday afternoon.
When the deal was first signed in April 2022 it was greeted with significant opposition, often quoting the unnamed cipher of an elderly resident of the West of Ireland who would now be prevented from watching his beloved game by virtue of a commercial deal that had little place in how he saw the world.
Indeed those same arguments were being trotted out again in the darker areas of online commentary yesterday.
The deal was announced on April 1st, only hours after Sport for Business ran a tongue-in-cheek April Fools gag that Al Jazeera had been awarded the rights to a number of games.
The reality was that this was a big deal in terms of broadcasting the games to a wider overseas audience and the rise of Gaelic Games interest in Britain and Europe is not unrelated to the greater levels of coverage not only in live programmes but in promotional and other areas that Sky brought to life.
There is not a single sport in Ireland or overseas that has not been tempted or gone all in with paywall broadcasting of games. Football and Rugby have been the leaders in our world and the Heineken cup was off free-to-air screens for decades until recently, with little more than a whisper of indignation.
In actual fact, though the world did not stop spinning when Sky came on board. More games were televised live than ever before, different ways of analysing games and bringing them to life were introduced and a wider world got to see them.
During the lockdown, we clung to TV screens and embraced the world of streaming as the only way of engaging with one full All Ireland season and part of a second.
The negotiations seem to have centered on Sky carrying more games in the new cycle and perhaps in the GAA wishing to take back some of the exclusivity by making games otherwise blocked internationally available as part of a full-service GAAGo.
The GAA worked for Sky because even if the numbers looked relatively small compared to Free to air, they provided live sport that was competitive and of interest in the summer period which is the quietest time of year for the Sky Sports channels.
There was a desire to carry on. The fee payable would have been small in comparison to its overall rights budget. But the questions of access to more games and exclusivity would have been the likely dealbreakers and so the deal has come to an end.
It is hard on those that have contributed and would have hoped to continue. Presenter Gráinne McElwain and analysts Jim McGuinness, Peter Canavan, Jamesie O’Connor, and many others will now have empty schedules.
The GAA itself will gird its loins for criticism again of whatever comes next.
A failure to make everything free to everybody on every occasion is like a catnip to critics who most often fail to see either the commercial or the promotional value that creates a stronger association at every level.
The options range from the realistic of RTÉ and GAAGo with an expanded remit, through to the possibility of a shared agreement as in rugby between RTÉ and Virgin Media, through to the more fanciful of Apple TV, Amazon Prime and other big beasts that could, perhaps, be tempted by the narrative.
We will know soon enough and we are dusting down our long-held view that GAAGo was ahead of its time and would ultimately prove to be not only a winner for the GAA but also a best-in-class model for other sports to follow, all the way up to the English Premier League.
Sky is not going anywhere. It employs 1,000 staff in Dublin, has a vibrant Irish business, and is committed to the Irish Women’s Football team ahead of their World Cup appearance next summer.
They have been good for the GAA and we are sorry to see that ending, for now, though JD Buckley’s sign-off line in the Sky statement was that “both parties are committed to identifying potential future partnership opportunities.” We hope that does indeed come to fruition in some way.
