Within minutes of our suggestion this morning that a deal should and could be done to televise the Munster Football Final replay news emerged that RTÉ Sport would indeed be broadcasting the game live from Killarney on Saturday 18th July at 7pm.
It’s a high profile game and coming off the back of the best game of the season to date in the Championship so there was a natural clamour for it to be broadcast.
There may well have been requests from the GAA to the Munster Council to schedule any possible replay to Saturday afternoon in order to avoid a clash with the 7pm slot assigned exclusively to Sky Sports as a result of last year’s three year broadcast rights deal.
Munster though felt it would be better for the fans and players to go with Saturday night and so a request had to be made to Sky to accommodate the shift.
We suggested this morning that such a request could be significantly sugared by offering Sky the right to carry the game live simultaneously but this does not appear to have been on the table between the different parties.
It is certainly a good result for the fans who will now get to see the game, for RTÉ who will draw in additional advertising revenue and for the sponsors of the Football Championship Eircom, Supervalu and AIB who would have been none too pleased if the game had not been broadcast.
The only loser would appear to be Sky who were in reality left with little alternative but to accede to a request from the GAA to give up their slot.
The Sky statement issued in reply to a request from Sport for Business reads:
“Following a request from the GAA to move the throw-in times of Sky Sports’ two games on Saturday 18th July to facilitate live coverage of the Munster Final Replay, we have agreed to reschedule our live coverage in the interests of GAA fans. Sky Sports will now be showing a double-header of All-Ireland SFC 2015 Round 3B qualifiers at 3pm and 5pm on the 18th July. Coverage will commence from 2.30pm”
“The Sky Sports All-Ireland SFC double-header will feature winners from Round 2B games, taking place this weekend, which include:
– Derry v Wexford
– Tipperary v Louth
– Tyrone v Meath
– Armagh v Galway”
“Before then, this Saturday, 11th July, in a repeat of the 2013 All-Ireland final, Cork and Clare will meet in a mouth-watering clash in Round 2 of the All-Ireland SHC Qualifiers at Semple Stadium in Thurles, live on Sky Sports 3, with coverage commencing from 6.30pm.”
If they had resisted the call, as is their contractual right they would have come in for significant criticism from fans as well as stirring the residual anger from some within Ireland over the encroachment of Pay TV into the GAA.
It was the proverbial rock and a hard place though the pain could have been relieved significantly if the right to share the game had been put forward. RTÉ would have got the game and the lion’s share of the domestic audience. Sky could have freed up space for an extra marquee game here and across the UK while GAAGo would have had to give up the UK rights to a game that was never scheduled to take place anyway.
If everyone had given a little, everyone could have won a bit.
Ultimately getting as many to see the game is the optimum result and that has largely been achieved.
We only hope that the negotiations of the last 24 hours, and the absence of Sky from those discussions, as we believe, until the last minute, will not come back with a bite when the negotiations for the next broadcast deal come up in the next 18 months.
