Amatuerism v Professionalism. Small budgets v Big budgets. Has the horse bolted?

The last thing the GAA needs is bigger stadiums!

Smaller better quality stadia is the way to go.

For a country that has so much wind and rain it's a bit bizarre that 3/4's of most GAA grounds are uncovered. It doesn't make for a good match day experience.

It was mentioned on the radio in relation to the Cork story that Ireland has more stadiums per capita than any other country. So I decided to look it up.

From the Echo in November 2021:

"Ireland, due to our historic sporting/political rivalries, already has more stadiums per capita than any country in the world. Most are small by international standards but many regional grounds for the GAA have significant capacities. We have 38 arenas, across the sports, with capacities in excess of 10,000 spectators. Most of these are the GAA regional HQs but we also have the large stadiums of Croke Park, 83,000, Aviva, 52,000, Páirc Uí Chaoimh, 69,000, Semple, 46,000, and the Gaelic Grounds with 44,000 to 50,000."

I assume that is for the 26 counties. One outlier is Louth, currently with no stadium able to hold Championship games.

People follow success and the chance of being successful. That's not attainable in the current model. There are the haves and have nots. Professionalism and a draft system and salary cap would turn that on its head.

And thats where the whole thing breaks down.

Who gets to decide which teams should be pro and which shouldnt.

Dublin can go pro, but Meath cant. Or Meath can go pro, but Offaly cant. Or Offaly hurlers can go pro but the Offaly footballers cant.

Dublin pro team is playing Longford amateur team in the all Ireland... why should Longford show up....

What happens when the men are being paid and the women arent. Do you really think the Dublin mens team is training any harder than the Dublin womens team?

Not to mention that the players themselves arent particularly calling for it.

Will never happen.

OK - and so lets Galway are in the league - and they are pro. And then they get relegated. Do they stop being pro? And then say Armagh get promoted, do they start being pro? But what if they get relegated again the following year. And what about the class player from Roscommon. Will he be able to move club to Galway so he can go pro? None of this works in practice.

There's no point in having a conversation with you as your arguments just take on the most nonsensical meanders possible. Jumping from womens professional leagues to reducing the pitch and taking away points.

As the game is, its unsustainable. €35 million a year and increasing being pumped in to IC where 95% have no chance of winning anything ever. Guys leaving the game in weaker counties as the demands are too high for the rewards. Neil McManus born in Antrim, wonderful hurler, trains as hard as anyone, will never play in even a significant game. An inferior hurler from KK would have 3 All Irelands in his pocket. Emlyn Mulligan from Leitrim, same story. Players are leaving in their droves, even from successful counties.

People are losing interest, in football especially, as the game is too predictable. You know who's likely to win it every year. Draws have no one watching as Galway always draw Mayo and Roscommon, Derry always draw Donegal or Armagh. Same thing, year in, year out.

It won't happen today or tomorrow but the games will go one of two ways. There'll be a professional league or IC will be severely cut back due to players not willing to invest their lives for nothing.

The problem I guess is that the GAA is built around volunteerism. It completely breaks down without it.

And I think a lot of friction would come from a situation where - on the one hand, people are giving up enormous amounts of time, which they do, to support the organisation - and on the other hand, some people are being paid to play. I just cant see it.

Yeah thats fair enough.

In football, say you have two leagues, 16 counties per league (32 teams), so 15 game season, QF's, SF's final. Cup competition on provincial grounds, max 6 games. Max 24 games a season for arguments sake.

Each county side has a panel of 32 and a management/backroom team of 18. So 50 involved in total.

Everyone involved gets €500 per game.

So 32 teams, of 50 people, max 24 games, at €500 a head. That's €19,200,000. Now obviously the final total is a good bit lower than that as half the teams would only be getting 16 games a year, but it's the max that can be paid out.

Would that be sustainable? Say, add €5 to match days and have 4/5 official sponsors putting in a million quid a year.

It's possible for me. Might be a disaster, but its possible. And if it's possible, you can be sure it'll be tried at some stage.

Yeah, just the 15 round robin games, home and away alternates every year. Keeps the season short and allows for the Cup.

Massive potential for promotion/relegation would a way of keeping it interesting. Say in the top league, bottom two relegated automatically, next two play off to stay up/go down. You'd have to finish 12th or higher to avoid relegation in the round robin. In the bottom tier. SF losers play off to see how gets promoted.

As an aside, even ignoring the semi-pro side of things, I wouldn't mind seeing that for football.

Last season, Austrian clubs received €51 Million in UEFA money. Danish clubs shared the same amount. Portuguese teams earned €151 Million.

Then you have transfer money. In 2023/24 Austrian clubs brought a net €67.6 Million into the league through transfers abroad, and the Danish figure was €63.6 Million. Portugal's: €97 Million.

So before they sell a single ticket, or sign a TV deal, put a sponsor on the shirt etc. the Danish clubs between them have nearly €120 Million in the bank from 2 revenue streams Gaelic Games will never have.

What will compensate for it?

Thank you

You saved me looking for that info and posting it.

People need to remember that GAA is a niche sport (well two niche sports obviously) played in a small country of 6 odd million.

There is no example of a professional sport that compares with those fundamentals.

The post I was responding to was effectively saying "If Denmark and Austria can have professional soccer leagues, we can have a professional GAA"

The Danish league is a good comparison but I don't agree with your "invested in" bit. 50% of Irish people I know or probably even more than that don't care about GAA. The Danish league also gets extra funds from being involved in European competition, the FA gets funds from International competition and also clubs get transfer fees from abroad. It is also 1 sport not 2 which is a problem for GAA

It's still a great comparison though and shows that we could sustain a 10/12 team professional league with 15/20k average attendances.

There will be a hell of a lot of disappointed counties though. Not just 20 out of 32 because people forget these pro leagues usually have 2 or 3 teams from the capital and maybe 2 from the 2nd city.

Every sport has clubs all over the world. Another of these weird myths the GAA orgasms over is we are the only sport with expat foreign clubs (and don't bother coming back with the propaganda articles about the locals taking it up).

It is a completely unknown anonymous sport in London who actually have a team never mind the rest of the world.

No one "envies" GAA because they don't know it exists.

We are not tripling our population in 20 years.

I don't know if you have noticed but a lot of our population growth has come from outside Ireland.

From experience it's very difficult to get the kids of immigrants into GAA.

They'll come as under 6s and try it for a while but to them and their parents it's a totally foreign sport that they never saw before and they don't last long.

They tend to stick longer at soccer or basketball, sports that are more familiar to them and their parents.

So even though the population might be increasing there is no guarantee that the drivers of that population will become interested in GAA.

As for there being clubs all over the world, you are right, there are, but it's just a hobby for those involved, it's a social sport.

Even in North America where the GAA has had a presence for decades it's just a social sport.

Soccer has been trying to break North America forever and is still way behind the other big sports, and an international sport like rugby is almost invincible in the US.

So how do you expect GAA to get traction?

"Or the mainstream stuff we see on TV"

You only know this because we see it on TV. Other minor sports have their tiny expat clubs too you just don't see them.

And yes if you go into an Irish bar abroad you will see GAA. As for other sports bars I call bullsht on that.

No foreigner I ever met heard off GAA I til me or another Irish person told them about it and non took it up.

You and a large portion of this thread are living in some little dreamland GAA bubble.

That's a nice ideal but what big professional sport has the capital (or major population like NY/Glasgow/Sydney) only has one team.

3 separate Dublin teams could have more of a population than most counties.

There's optimism and then there's this. If any sport is going to benefit from large expat communities in its non traditional areas it will be cricket not the GAA. There isn't going to be an explosion in popularity in the GAA outside of Ireland, it's non-existent outside of expat communities abroad. Maybe go to some non-Irish pubs abroad next time.

You seem to have started from the position that Professionalism and new league structures could work, and so are shaping everything to fit that position. So the GAA is super popular all over the world, people will flock in their tens of thousands to this new format, counties will join together with great enthusiasm, etc etc.

The problem is that its all bunk.