War without the shooting, you could say. One fought through the trenches of YouTube and streaming services.
The Battle of The May Day Bank Holiday resulted in a massacre for RTÉ. The Worker’s Party of GAA+ outflanked them with a risky manoeuvre and caught them off guard.
They advertised that the draw for Round 1 of the All-Ireland football championship would be taking place on the GAA+ YouTube channel.
Someone in GAA+ has clearly read up on his Sun Tzu and ‘The Art of War.’ This was the element of surprise made flesh as 14,000 tuned in while they nibbled their sandwiches.
This was a time for innovation. Instead, what we got was Paddy Andrews as host and Paddy McBrearty as dutiful sidekick.
They had a half-hour look back over the weekend’s action and covered all the standard metrics of kickouts, turnovers and shot efficiency while we, the viewing public, died a little inside.
Maybe someone in GAA+ might have hoped for something different. Some levity. Something that could be clipped and teased on social media at least. All it provoked was mild indifference or, in some cases, irritation.
Paddy Andrews. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Viewer comments are best handled with caution, but this was worth dipping your toe in to see the, ahem, feedback.
Best comment goes to a viewer who noted, ‘Children’s hospital will be finished before the draw.’
Perhaps this double-act will grow into their own skin. Maybe by summer’s end, The Two Paddies will be selling out St Anne’s Park in a marriage of city and country as Gah-heads get their county jersey on for a night of chicken fillet rolls, kickout stats and splitting the G.
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Whatever.
Onto the draw itself. You have to wonder about the editorial decisions made here. Is there seriously no better or entertaining way of making a draw than two men lifting balls from goldfish bowls, terrified that one or the other might emit a post-lunch burp?
Even department store Muzak might have done, just to lift the tension, because underpinning this whole adventure is the sense that nobody, nobody whatsoever really actually understands the system in place for the All-Ireland Championship.
All they know is that a few teams will make it to the semi-finals and it’ll be grand.
The most pressing event for now is the meeting of Kerry and Donegal in Killarney.
Yesterday, we predicted that GAA+ and RTÉ will go to war over this game and that appears to be the case. Both entities want to broadcast the game. There will only be one winner here. But the state broadcaster can lose more quickly if they are not careful.
RTÉ have to play it clever. They cannot afford to piss off anyone from the GAA, let alone the likes of Peter McKenna and Noel Quinn, the men who make the money decisions around Croke Park.
When it comes to aggression, the most they can muster is a little side-eye. Perhaps an eye-roll or an exasperated sigh. Some pass-agg stuff.
Where RTÉ find themselves now is an interesting case study for broadcasters.
Public confidence was shattered entirely when it came to light that Ryan Tubridy was getting half a million snots per annum, with the help of a barter account.
More recently, RTÉ’s financial judgement was perfectly captured by the moment they sold their 50% stake in GAA GO for €3 million.
This was a figure that was around one and a half times the annual revenue. It does take an MBA to realise that one party did less well than the other from this deal.
What do RTÉ have now?
Well, if you look at the list of the top watched 50 TV programmes in 2025, from the top 10, only two (The Late Late Toy Show and an episode of The Traitors) were not a sports broadcast. The rest were the All-Ireland finals, rugby and soccer games.
Under government protected/mandated content, the two All-Ireland finals and four semi-finals will be free to air. RTÉ’s contract also ensures they cover the six provincial finals.
This is in the gift of the sitting government and the current rights go to the end of the 2027 season.
For rounds 1, 2, 3 and the quarter-finals, there will be 24 games. GAA+ will have 16 of them and RTÉ will have seven.
You can see the way this is going.
In that context, it’s worth considering what GAA+ offer.
Well, it’s cheap, at €95 each year. And there are early-bird offers, and deductions for club members.
Their output has increased with four shows outside of the live coverage. They also have been on a very handy crash course from RTÉ, observing how the entire production works, before taking it all back home.
It was the equivalent of the GAA shaking the class nerd down for tuck shop money before flushing its head down the toilet. RTÉ couldn’t even extract some revenge by putting an arm over their homework.
In any event, most of these things are done by third-party contractors. A channel number for Sky and Virgin media boxes may well happen soon. Whether this happens across five or ten years is not clear, but from our soundings, GAA+ are happy to keep RTÉ in the ring. For now.
GAA+ presenter Aisling O'Reilly and pundit Patrick McBrearty. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
What can RTE offer?
Nothing really. They might have had a point of difference with what some generously call the ‘Golden Age’ of punditry, when soccer coverage had a beautiful mix, but it’s a stretch to say that rugby and Gaelic games – often drowning in hysteria and without the same charm – always reached those levels.
But the lines are blurred now.
Pundits can slip across a desk and become a host.
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Even Dalo and the boys are now attending the Munster championship launches. And while in our studios for a recent podcast ahead of his attempt on Mount Everest, Padraig O’Hora told us in conversation that GAA+ pundits are encouraged to innovate and be authentic.
Which stands in contrast to RTÉ, whose stable of pundits have been hand-picked and selected and are expected to comply with a certain formula.
Faced with all this, there is no war.
For as long as it is necessary, the GAA will allow RTÉ to cover the protected games. Until a day comes when they don’t and they have a figurehead who doesn’t mind the criticism that follows when the Plain People of Ireland cannot watch the game on what was formerly an institution.
After that, the GAA monetise their product. They show more and more games on their platforms, while others, such as RTÉ, get access to less and less. Anything short of that, in this era, sounds practically communist.
For as long as the RTÉ existed, the GAA needed access to their millions of listeners on radio and viewers on television. For the first time in history, this is no longer the case.
The GAA, like many a decent-sized sporting organisation, are in the broadcasting business now. They hold all the aces.
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RTÉ will lose all the major battles, and the war, when coming up against GAA+
A DECLARATION OF war, is what it was.
War without the shooting, you could say. One fought through the trenches of YouTube and streaming services.
The Battle of The May Day Bank Holiday resulted in a massacre for RTÉ. The Worker’s Party of GAA+ outflanked them with a risky manoeuvre and caught them off guard.
They advertised that the draw for Round 1 of the All-Ireland football championship would be taking place on the GAA+ YouTube channel.
Someone in GAA+ has clearly read up on his Sun Tzu and ‘The Art of War.’ This was the element of surprise made flesh as 14,000 tuned in while they nibbled their sandwiches.
This was a time for innovation. Instead, what we got was Paddy Andrews as host and Paddy McBrearty as dutiful sidekick.
They had a half-hour look back over the weekend’s action and covered all the standard metrics of kickouts, turnovers and shot efficiency while we, the viewing public, died a little inside.
Maybe someone in GAA+ might have hoped for something different. Some levity. Something that could be clipped and teased on social media at least. All it provoked was mild indifference or, in some cases, irritation.
Viewer comments are best handled with caution, but this was worth dipping your toe in to see the, ahem, feedback.
Best comment goes to a viewer who noted, ‘Children’s hospital will be finished before the draw.’
Perhaps this double-act will grow into their own skin. Maybe by summer’s end, The Two Paddies will be selling out St Anne’s Park in a marriage of city and country as Gah-heads get their county jersey on for a night of chicken fillet rolls, kickout stats and splitting the G.
Whatever.
Onto the draw itself. You have to wonder about the editorial decisions made here. Is there seriously no better or entertaining way of making a draw than two men lifting balls from goldfish bowls, terrified that one or the other might emit a post-lunch burp?
Even department store Muzak might have done, just to lift the tension, because underpinning this whole adventure is the sense that nobody, nobody whatsoever really actually understands the system in place for the All-Ireland Championship.
All they know is that a few teams will make it to the semi-finals and it’ll be grand.
The most pressing event for now is the meeting of Kerry and Donegal in Killarney.
Yesterday, we predicted that GAA+ and RTÉ will go to war over this game and that appears to be the case. Both entities want to broadcast the game. There will only be one winner here. But the state broadcaster can lose more quickly if they are not careful.
RTÉ have to play it clever. They cannot afford to piss off anyone from the GAA, let alone the likes of Peter McKenna and Noel Quinn, the men who make the money decisions around Croke Park.
When it comes to aggression, the most they can muster is a little side-eye. Perhaps an eye-roll or an exasperated sigh. Some pass-agg stuff.
Where RTÉ find themselves now is an interesting case study for broadcasters.
Public confidence was shattered entirely when it came to light that Ryan Tubridy was getting half a million snots per annum, with the help of a barter account.
More recently, RTÉ’s financial judgement was perfectly captured by the moment they sold their 50% stake in GAA GO for €3 million.
This was a figure that was around one and a half times the annual revenue. It does take an MBA to realise that one party did less well than the other from this deal.
What do RTÉ have now?
Well, if you look at the list of the top watched 50 TV programmes in 2025, from the top 10, only two (The Late Late Toy Show and an episode of The Traitors) were not a sports broadcast. The rest were the All-Ireland finals, rugby and soccer games.
Under government protected/mandated content, the two All-Ireland finals and four semi-finals will be free to air. RTÉ’s contract also ensures they cover the six provincial finals.
This is in the gift of the sitting government and the current rights go to the end of the 2027 season.
For rounds 1, 2, 3 and the quarter-finals, there will be 24 games. GAA+ will have 16 of them and RTÉ will have seven.
You can see the way this is going.
In that context, it’s worth considering what GAA+ offer.
Well, it’s cheap, at €95 each year. And there are early-bird offers, and deductions for club members.
Their output has increased with four shows outside of the live coverage. They also have been on a very handy crash course from RTÉ, observing how the entire production works, before taking it all back home.
In any event, most of these things are done by third-party contractors. A channel number for Sky and Virgin media boxes may well happen soon. Whether this happens across five or ten years is not clear, but from our soundings, GAA+ are happy to keep RTÉ in the ring. For now.
What can RTE offer?
Nothing really. They might have had a point of difference with what some generously call the ‘Golden Age’ of punditry, when soccer coverage had a beautiful mix, but it’s a stretch to say that rugby and Gaelic games – often drowning in hysteria and without the same charm – always reached those levels.
But the lines are blurred now.
Pundits can slip across a desk and become a host.
Even Dalo and the boys are now attending the Munster championship launches. And while in our studios for a recent podcast ahead of his attempt on Mount Everest, Padraig O’Hora told us in conversation that GAA+ pundits are encouraged to innovate and be authentic.
Which stands in contrast to RTÉ, whose stable of pundits have been hand-picked and selected and are expected to comply with a certain formula.
Faced with all this, there is no war.
For as long as it is necessary, the GAA will allow RTÉ to cover the protected games. Until a day comes when they don’t and they have a figurehead who doesn’t mind the criticism that follows when the Plain People of Ireland cannot watch the game on what was formerly an institution.
After that, the GAA monetise their product. They show more and more games on their platforms, while others, such as RTÉ, get access to less and less. Anything short of that, in this era, sounds practically communist.
For as long as the RTÉ existed, the GAA needed access to their millions of listeners on radio and viewers on television. For the first time in history, this is no longer the case.
The GAA, like many a decent-sized sporting organisation, are in the broadcasting business now. They hold all the aces.
****
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