The GAA’s top finance officer believes that the new championship formats being introduced this year will not have a major impact on income.
Tom Ryan was speaking at Wednesday's launch of Central Council's 2017 annual accounts, which showed an encouraging, across-the-board increase in both gate receipts and attendances during last year.
This season will see a round-robin format in operation at both the provincial hurling championship and All-Ireland football quarter-final stages. Ryan cautioned against expecting too much from the football and too little from the hurling, in which the All-Ireland qualifiers, revenue from which goes to the GAA centrally, will be replaced by provincial fixtures.
“If you look at some of the qualifier games in the course of hurling, some years they tend not to be hugely lucrative. So I don’t see it that the two provinces will gain and we’ll lose out. I think in the totality of things it will be better across the board for both of us but I think on the football side, the first thing that occurs to you is that it’s going to be a [bonanza].
“I don’t think it will be, because it is going to be physically difficult for people to get to every game week in and week out. So I would temper some of the expectation around that.”
The GAA’s finances show an increase in revenue of €5 million for a total €65,620,502, described by Ryan as “a stable, good, decent year”.
Gate receipts in 2017 were up with an increase of nearly €4 million on the back of an additional 180,000 – or 24 per cent – attending All-Ireland Championship matches even allowing for 2016 having benefited from the Dublin-Mayo All-Ireland football final going to a replay and the Kilkenny-Waterford semi-final going to a replay in Thurles, which was worth €1m to Central Council last year.
There were however replayed football semi and quarter-finals last year between Mayo and Kerry and Mayo and Roscommon.
Ryan welcomed the figures as “arresting the drop of recent years” and said that the average attendance at an All-Ireland championship fixture had grown to 21,723 and that there had been revenue growth in championships and both leagues.
Central Council income for 2017 comprised of gate receipts at 52 per cent, commercial revenue at 29 per cent, other streams – largely Croke Park – providing 12 per cent and Sport Ireland with seven per cent.
Ryan also reported the distribution figure of what goes back to GAA units was at €14,800,000 – up fro €13,400,000 – the highest he had administered as director of finance.
A decrease
Games development grants showed a decrease from €11.4m to €10.3m but this was simply a reflection of the fact that the World Games, held in 2016, were not staged last year.
The annual focus on Dublin’s games development grant revealed that at €1,298,630, it was down by 11 per cent on 2016 and has fallen 18 per cent since the high point of €1,588,001 in 2012.
It continues though, to dwarf other counties with Meath a distant second with €267,046. Games development is just one heading under payments to counties and accounts for 22 per cent of the overall figure but it is the one under which the imbalance towards Dublin is most pronounced.
Ryan said measures had been taken to redress the imbalance.
“I don’t want it to be an anti-Dublin thing, just looking at coming up with a fairer balance of things. A few things have happened over the course of the year to address that. We for example discontinued, in previous years the teams that won competitions would receive additional grants for winning those competitions.
“We discontinued that on the basis that it tended to be the same teams that were winning them again and again and perhaps that was exacerbating an imbalance between counties.
“We did look at the coaching funding going to counties and I think if you look at it over the last couple of years, certainly the previous year versus last year, you would have seen a diminution in Dublin’s amount. I think we signalled this time last year that we were going to embark on that process and we have diminished the funding.
“It’s probably useful as well to look at the relativities between Dublin and the other counties. There are four or five in there that will have seen significant increases, one or two of them may have doubled.”
Player welfare payments were up €2m to €6.4m, an increase reflecting Croke Park's decision to fund a higher mileage rate for players. Of the total, €2.8m went to the Gaelic Players Association.
On the question of attendances, a question arose as to whether there was any plan to alter throw-in times for the Division One and Two football league finals on 1st April, which clash with the European Cup rugby quarter-final between Leinster and Saracens at Lansdowne Road.
Director general Páraic Duffy intervened to say: "I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be two o'clock and four o'clock. We're not going to change. It hasn't been raised. I don't expect that to be changed."
