Darragh Berry
Depending on what side of a city or town you live in, you grow up playing either Rugby or Gaelic Football. Some are lucky and play both for a while but, as you reach the late stages of your teenage years, you need to make a vital decision between the two. Most choose Rugby, and why wouldn’t you, it’s a professional sport and you will be getting paid to do what you love.
However, Irish Rugby only became professional in 1995 and one can imagine it’s only a matter of time before the Gaelic Athletic Association follows suit. Although, for an amateur organisation that doesn’t pay it’s players to play the sport, the G.A.A has a vast amount of money floating around in it’s organisation. On a Saturday night in your local, you can be assured that you will be asked to buy a lotto ticket for the local G.A.A club but very rarely see the same being asked for the local rugby club.
The Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) and the Gaelic Athletic Association (G.A.A) have released their annual reports from the previous 2016 season. In the report, there is figures of income and expenditure from the two orgainsations. There has been a lot of talk about how much these sporting organisations make and how their money is distributed to games development. So, let’s take a look and figure out what money is coming in, and where it is going to in terms of games development.
As a sports journalist for a local paper, you cover a variety of different sports each week. There will always be a cover charge at a local G.A.A game but once again, very seldom will you be asked for money at a Rugby game. The G.A.A are obviously reaping the rewards from this constant ticket charge at games which can begin as early as January in the ‘pre-warm up’ competitions (such as the McKenna and O’ Brien cups) at both club and county level. This increases as the year goes on as the chart below shows.
There is €35 euro price difference between a ticket for a Six Nations game and a ticket for the All Ireland final. The G.A.A receive 2.3 times the amount of money from ticket sales alone than that of the IRFU but with that sort of ticket pricing, it is easy to see why.
When it comes to commercial revenue, The G.A.A receive over double the amount than that IRFU. All year around, we are subject to G.A.A matches on the television with the majority being shown on R.T.E on a weekly basis. Of coarse, the G.A.A All Ireland Series is a yearly competition and revenue from matches being shown on television is always definite for the organisation.
Rugby matches are a little less fortunate when it comes to being shown regularly. The Six Nations takes place for two months every year with the Rugby World Cup coming every four years. The provincial competition, the PRO 12 mainly shown on TG4.
So without this constant coverage on R.T.E, it is easy to see why the IRFU are making substantially less amount of money than the G.A.A on that front.
However, when you add it all up, the IRFU have an income of just over €76 million compared to that of the G.A.A’s which receives €60.5 million in income. How is that?
G.A.A is an Irish sport and while it does include the likes of London and New York in it’s Connacht and All Ireland Championships, most of the games are played in Ireland. However, the IRFU covers every part of the Irish Rugby scene, from your local rugby club of Galwegians, to your provinical club of the mighty Connacht, all the way up to the Irish squad.
It’s not just depending on income coming from within Ireland as in Connacht winning the PRO 12, but it also thrives off Ireland’s success in the Six Nations, International friendlies and of coarse every four years, the Rugby World Cup. The ‘other’ income from both pie charts are miscellaneous items such as grants, loans, interest and fines that the organisation may have picked up along the way.
Sadly for the IRFU and G.A.A, this is their total income before they start dishing out money throughout their organisation. It is a €16 million difference in income which seems like a huge amount for two organisations who would be relatively of the same hierarchy in sport in Ireland. However, for an amateur institution, the G.A.A are racking in money, and if it’s not going directly into the players pockets, then where is it going?
Expenditure can be something as little as buying medals and trophies for underage level to something as big as paying the top referees and linesmen to officiate an important game like a final.
A big talking point among the G.A.A is the notion of player development funding. Player development is self-explanatory, as part of the expenditure, funds are taking and pumped into coaching so that in turn, they can try and develop each and every player so that they can grow to the best of their ability. The term in G.A.A for the development initiative is ‘From Cul Camps to County Colours” while in the IRFU, it is “from Six to Six Nations”.
Although the percentages and figures may not suggest it, the spoils given to each province from the games development fund in both organisations are relatively equal. You have to bear in mind that there is only five counties in Connacht (17% – G.A.A, €1.1M – IRFU) and twelve in Leinster (31% – G.A.A, €2.7M – IRFU). Double the counties, double the percentage/figures, double the funds shared.
But wait, there’s more.
In rugby that is the end of the games development fund, but not in G.A.A. In addition to the provincial funding in the G.A.A, the counties themselves then get even more funding. As you can see in the chart below, the figure given is in the €100,000 to €200,000, with the exception of Cork, Derry, Offaly who break the €200k mark and The Dubs who get a whopping €1.4million, which is just over a quarter of what the rest of the counties make combined.
And that’s how the games development fund is divided. Right?
Nearly there. In the round ball, Dublin then get their own, individual, games development funding from a grant assisted by Sports Ireland. That is on top of the two sets of games development funding they have received already.
As you can see from the pie chart above, in terms of games development in the G.A.A, Dublin are basically their own province. They stand just short of €3 million and receive more games development funds than the provinces of Munster and Connacht combined.
In 2016, Connacht defied the odds to become Pro 12 champions. They were underdogs and much like Leicester in the Premiership, people even found it hard to believe that they were any where near the top. When you look at the table below, you see that all four provinces have been in the final in the last seven years, with Leinster winning it twice and Connacht and Munster winning it once. Ulster have been in the final once and lost but fear not Ulster fans, it’s only 11 years ago since you last lifted that trophy.
There is a little bit more of a hierarchy creeping into the G.A.A scene though. Of the last six All Ireland finals, Dublin have won four. In more recent years, they have won back to back All Ireland titles, something unheard of in modern times and in the last week, they set a record in the G.A.A as the first team to go 35 games unbeaten.
This year, in Leinster’s Pre Season competition, the O’ Brien Cup, Dublin ran out victorious beating Louth in the final. However, what was worrying for not only Leinster but the rest of Ireland, while they were facing first team opposition, Dublin were playing their third string side in the competition, and still won.
Is this down to the games development fund? Are the Dublin players getting an unfair advantage on the rest of the country? or is it just simply a coincidence and The Dubs are just going through a golden patch?
Will the G.A.A every see a triumphant underdog like Connacht?
Or will the old dog guard the door forever more?
