Paul Rouse: GAA's move to take control of GAAGO raises lots of questions

This is despite agreeing a five-year rights deal just two years ago – obviously signing a contract only means so much.

Why has the GAA decided to do this and what does it mean?

To answer this question you must look first at the history of GAAGO, a streaming service set up in partnership by the GAA and RTÉ in 2014. It was designed as a subscription service which was initially only available outside Ireland. It meant that Irish emigrants could pay an annual subscription to watch all GAA matches that were being broadcast on television in Ireland.

This service enjoyed a steady increase in popularity and profits, until a transformational event occurred – Covid-19 and, in particular, the lockdowns – which meant the playing of GAA matches behind closed doors.

Even before the Covid crisis, there were clubs and organisations in various sports in Ireland live-streaming their own sporting events and trying to get people to buy passes on-line.

But, as history reveals time and again, one of the things that crises do is to accelerate change that is already underway.

So, in covid, GAAGO became available in Ireland for the first time and was no longer restricted to people who lived outside the island.

This is because when inter-county GAA matches returned in autumn 2020, GAAGO streamed live National Football League matches within Ireland. This allowed for coverage of every match in every division – it was allowed because those games were played behind closed-doors.

When the provincial and All-Ireland championships started, GAAGO then streamed every match not shown live on television. It was the first time in the history of the championship that every match could be seen live on a screen.

It meant that 35 championship matches were carried live on television before Christmas 2020; with the remaining 12 games broadcast on GAAGO. The cost of each match was €5.

This innovation built on a revolution in the broadcast of club matches that had taken place earlier in the summer of 2020, where county boards had worked with local providers to stream their club championships – again played wither behind closed doors or in front of a hugely restricted crowd.

What the evidence of GAA broadcasting during the Covid-19 pandemic showed was that a mix of public service partners – RTÉ, TG4 and BBC NI – with GAAGO at national and international level, coupled with county boards working with local partners, offered the most comprehensive service.

Then, two years ago, as Sky Sports pulled out of the bidding for the new GAA rights deal, GAAGO was essentially awarded the package that had previously gone to Sky Sports.

It marked a dramatic change in the allocation of the championship rights. It has also proved lucrative as GAAGO turned a profit which was paid in the form of a dividend to the GAA and to RTÉ.

There were three years left to run on this deal, but the GAA has obviously calculated that it is better off on its own and is in the process of jilting RTÉ. It will be interesting to hear why precisely this is happening, why it is happening now and who within the GAA is driving the decision?

As for what happens next, the GAA will have a range of decisions to make.

When will it rebrand GAAGO as GAATV?

And, crucially, two interlocking questions: what games will it show and how much will it charge for subscriptions?

Firstly, the question of the games that are to be shown will be crucial. In the GAA – and in every sports organisation – there will be inevitable arguments about how many games should be shown live and which precisely are the biggest games.

Over the past two summers there have been deep controversies when big matches with huge popular appeal were put on GAAGO. For example, the Cork v Limerick Munster hurling championship proved an epic that many people did not see. It – and a handful of other games – drew such popular clamour that politicians of every party got involved, including the then Tånaiste and Taoiseach earlier this year.

The overall view was that all GAA matches should be on free-to-air TV.

And yet, it is obvious that GAAGO needs high profile games to drive subscriptions. It is the only thing that makes commercial sense. How will the GAA cope with the criticism of the decisions that will inevitably provoke anger, notably among its own membership – the volunteers?

Secondly, the issue of the price point will be fascinating to watch. In 2023 and 2024, the annual subscription to GAAGO cost €79 (€69 for early bird). As sure as night follows day, the cost of that subscription will rise significantly over the coming years. But just how high will the GAA go?

There are various other questions.

When the next TV rights deal comes around, how many games will remain on free-to-air TV? This is a question that repeatedly confronts sports organisations all over the world. The dramatic change in technologies, the digital revolution that is underway, the extraordinary transformation in the media market that is ongoing suggests that for the foreseeable future the model of the biggest games being on free-to-air TV and the remainder being streamed is the most viable. But the devil is in the detail of precisely how many games and which ones?

The GAA is entering a brave new world of becoming its own broadcaster. Any parallels with the NFL, NBA and MLB in America work only to a point. There are no guarantees of what happens next.

Paul Rouse is professor of history at University College Dublin