The AIB Intermediate and Junior Club Championships were streamed live yesterday for the first time from Croke Park.
The broadcast could be seen on the AIB You Tube Channel and on the website of the company behind the streaming localstreaming.com.
The Mayo based company has been set up by former RTÉ journalist Liam Horan to bring club GAA games to as wide an audience as possible and while we don’t have access to the number of streams delivered yesterday the plan was to bring the games to as many as 40,000 across Ireland and around the world.
Live video streaming is growing in popularity, and the games between Westport and Kenmare, and Louisburgh against Glenbeigh / Glencar in the Junior and Intermediate club semi-finals in Ennis were shown online with over 23,900 from 72 countries watched at least a few minutes of live coverage.
It is part of a wider growing trend with Limerick based nTrai already delivering content from leading domestic Athletics events and looking to expand to other sports.
This is on top of the GAA and RTÉ joint venture GAAGo which is broadcasting games to almost 200 countries around the world and growing in popularity and reach year on year.
“It was very exciting to be live streaming all four finals,” said Patrick Somers, Marketing Manager, AIB.
“We have collaborated with LocalStreaming.club on a number of occasions and they have shown a real commitment to capturing the pure skill and intense emotion of these great championship games.”
“This is our 25th year in partnership with the Championships and AIB’s second season backing club and county, we are proud to now support Senior, Junior and Intermediate Championships across football, hurling and camogie. It is truly our honour to be a partner for one of the toughest championships in sport.”
“We have shown a number of games in the club football and hurling championships over the past two years, and we are delighted to now cover our first All-Ireland final series,” added Horan speaking before the weekend.
“These are huge days for all eight clubs involved and we look forward to allowing GAA fans worldwide to share in the excitement.”
The match commentary team over the two days included Mike Finnerty (match commentator from Sky Sports and Eir TV), former Kerry footballer Stephen Stack and current Meath goalkeeper Paddy O’Rourke.
The eight competing clubs provided their own co-commentators to add to the local knowledge and excitement of the broadcasts.
Last year Sport for Business hosted a popular Future of TV Sport event at the studios of RTÉ. We will shortly be announcing details of this year’s media focused event for sports and brands looking at the more diverse world of sports content.
Let us know if you are interested and we will be in touch shortly with details of this event
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