There was a full house and a great line-up of speakers in Dublin this morning for our Sporting Year Ahead event, in partnership with Teneo, at the Sugar Club.

Kerry and Dublin GAA went toe to toe on the couch with Maura Ashe and Marcus Ó Buachalla talking us through their roles as commercial leads at the two biggest ‘brands’ in Gaelic Games.

They were followed by Nancy Chillingworth, Team Ireland Chef de Mission for the upcoming Winter Olympics, on the mad logistics of athletes competing across multiple venues and five separate athletes’ villages.

GAA President Jarlath Burns was a showstopper, speaking with great honesty and authenticity about his Presidency, sponsorship, Casement Park, the role of the GAA in public policy debates, integration with the LGFA and Camogie Association, and, finally, with intense feeling about his role as an educator. We’ll have a full report on the ‘pin drop’ conversation in the coming days.

After the break, we took a deep dive into the Teneo Sponsorship Sentiment Index research, and again, we will have more details on this tomorrow.

Kevin Quinn of Tennis Ireland and John Gillick of AIG joined us to unveil a new partnership opening up access to 1,800 local authority and community tennis courts around the country.

Then Liam Neeson’s baritone teed up a chat about the Boxing Ireland rebrand and refresh with Gary Stewart and newly recrowned Elite National Champion Jude Gallagher.

We closed the show with Karen Coventry, CEO of Special Olympics Ireland and three athletes, Dara, Chris and Jacob, talking about the Ireland National Games taking place from June 18th to 21st and how we can all lend a hand to make it a very special event.

Here are some of the images from the morning with more to come over the coming days…

 

 

 

Image Credit: Sport for Business, Ryan Byrne, Inpho.ie

 

 

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