We will not get full confirmation until next Tuesday but the Euro 2028 Finals are coming to Ireland as we reported in yesterday’s Sport for Business AM Bulletin as the news broke.
The likelihood is that the Aviva Stadium in Dublin and the redeveloped Casement Park in Belfast will stage games in the group and the knock-out stages as two of the ten venues confirmed on the final list submitted to UEFA earlier this year.
We hosted an event featuring the CEOs of the Irish FA and Ulster GAA last month at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park and there was confidence that Casement Park would be built with work potentially starting in the early months of 2024.
Funding has been promised from a number of sources and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar suggested yesterday that the Republic of Ireland Government could, and should, put money into the project as one of the stakeholders.
UEFA officials have been in Dublin this week already meeting with Dublin City Council about the staging of next year’s UEFA Europa League, potentially featuring Liverpool.
Discussions around fan zones, transportation, policing and all the services that make up a major event were undertaken ahead of the Euro 2020 finals that fell to Covid, at least from a Dublin point of view and the teams will click into gear as soon as the announcement is confirmed.
It will be the biggest event to be staged here, likely the biggest ever in terms of footfall, visibility and value and we cannot wait for everything to get started.
Rob Hartnett appeared with Evanne Ní Chuilinn on last night’s Six-One News to talk about the potential value to the Irish economy from staging the games here.
RTÉ Six-One News October 4th Part One from 09:07
