The surge of interest in the early rounds of this year’s GAA Championship and the revised format from the Quarter Final stage of the Football Championship has put the Association in line for a record year of attendance.
Speaking at the announcement of AIB’s five-year extension of their sponsorships through to 2023 GAA Director general Tom Ryan suggested that over 1,500,000 fans would likely attend the All Ireland Championship this year.
Last year just under 1 million attended the 45 games with almost half of that from the six biggest matches at the business end of the Championship. This year there will be more games and they will be of greater intensity, adding up to a very positive mix of both revenue and also reach at a time when attention is being pulled in ever more directions.
Read more from the GAA’s Annual report on 2017
“I am delighted to be here to welcome the very auspicious announcement of this AIB extension,” he said.
“It has been an outstanding partnership and is now beyond 30 years at club level and eight at inter county which really is a testament to a relationship that works really well and is clearly of great value to both sides.”
“It is not only one of the longest but also one of the most imaginative partnerships in Irish sport.”
“It’s not only about the high profile events as well and operates at every level within the Association.”
“The initiation of the AIB GAA Club Player Awards in recent weeks was another example of how this relationship will continue to grow to deliver value for both sides.”
Read More about AIB’s Five-Year Extension of its Partnership with the GAA
“The prime focus though this morning is on the All Ireland Football Championship and the announcement comes at a very exciting time.”
“We will have a new format when we get to the Quarter Final stage. We are going to see more games between the top teams, at venues across the country.”
“We estimate and we hope that with the advent of new formats across both codes that we will see potentially 1,500,000 people attending GAA games across the Championships which is a very exciting prospect.”
Last year’s attendance was itself up 24 percent on 2016 so to double that increase again would be some achievement, albeit one that can be clearly constructed from adding eight games to the Quarter final stage in football and staging them over 12 different as opposed to last year’s two double headers at Croke Park.
To conjure such an increase in excitement, in fixtures and in overall benefit while at the same time shortening the season to effectively provide around six weeks additional time for club fixtures is a is a construct that we were asked to judge over time but which is clearly heading in the right direction from the very start.
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