THE GAA HAVE announced that they are inviting ‘expressions of interest’ for the media rights of specific broadcast packages for the All-Ireland senior championships.
The rights in question will be for the games which the GAAGO streaming service currently broadcast within Ireland and which were previously broadcast by Sky Sports.
The GAA website has this morning advertised that they are seeking expressions of interest by next Monday 12 August at 5pm to mediarights@gaa.ie.
GAAGO have broadcast games for the past two years, filling the vacancy created after the involvement of Sky Sports ended in late 2022, after nine years covering matches.
Currently the coverage is two years into a five-year agreement that is in place until the end of the 2027 championship.
GAAGO streamed 38 games exclusively in the 2024 championship, while Sky Sports previously had covered 14 live games. The format changes in the senior inter-county championships have resulted in a greater number of games now taking place.
This announcement could pave the way for stations like Vrigin Media and TG4 to potentially bid for the packages.
The RTÉ and BBC deals with the GAA will not be impacted by today’s news. RTÉ have an agreement to show 31 senior championship games live, along with the concluding stages of the Joe McDonagh and Tailteann Cup competitions, until the end of the 2027 championship.
The GAAGO coverage has come under the spotlight when some standout fixtures, particularly in the Munster hurling championship, have been covered by the streaming service, sparking criticism from GAA supporters and politicians.
Will the bidding partners have same rights GAA had to pick the games with most viewership and stick them behind paywall?
Seems to me this is a token gesture where they can claim they offered them
The battle of a paywall is lost unfortunately. A certain percentage of games will be behind a paywall in the future. The question is what broadcaster will show the games. If Sky regain the rights they will be behind a paywall but the one advantage is that they will be easier to access for even Ould Tom up a boreen as he won’t have broadband issues. Virgin media is interesting. Since virgin took over from TV3 they haven’t shown interest in GAA preferring to concentrate on Champions league and rugby. If they do bid though they have the facility to put games behind a paywall if they wish as they do with some champions league games
Tg4 do a great job of the club championship, hope they go for it. Plus, no one be crying about not seeing the games, theyll just have to learn a cupla focal!!