Club raffles for all ireland tickets

Been happening for years - see it a lot in Limerick over the last few years Golden Ticket mentality creates opportunities I don't hold the clubs at fault it's time people looked towards HQ.

The reality is clubs and county boards aren't funded enough by the corporate side of GAA. County Boards scrambling to fundraise to transport and accommodation for players is a disgrace surely head office could organise this for every team in the final. 100 euro a ticket and the 'talent' don't get paid and have to fundraise for all their own expenses.

Yeh I 100% wouldn’t blame the clubs taking the opportunity to raise some (probably) much needed funds.

If it’s allowed, then anything goes, although I obviously feel bad for genuine fans that would happily pay full price for the tickets. It must be highly frustrating to see tickets going to clubs that could go out to their members but are raffling them off instead.

I suppose the one issue I'd have with this is that clubs tend to lean heavily on people who are already contributing a lot.

You'll have a parent who is an underage coach - they have to pay full adult fees in the first place for the privilege of giving up their time three times a week to put cones out , and direct kids around a pitch.

And honestly, it is like a second job, its a huge time commitment.

And then on top of that, they'll be told - can you go out now and sell these tickets to all the parents in your group, and while your at it, buy some tickets yourself.

And some clubs will even be publishing league tables of which teams have sold the most tickets.

Clubs need to be careful not to bite the hand that feeds.

What would solve a lot of this is stop giving so many final tickets to counties not involved.

I hate this kind of stuff. Glorified touting, so so wrong.

What amount of tickets are actually given to the clubs?

Is it 2 per club? And something like 4000 clubs in the country? So maybe 8000?

Is those numbers are correct, that's 10% of the stadium, not excessive imho. If it was Uefa, they'd have 40,000 taken and let the 2 counties split the remaining 40,000!

The breakdown of 82,006 All-Ireland Final ticket allocations are as follows:

• County allocations (58,110)
• Premium/Corporate (10,528)
• Season tickets (3,505)
• Term tickets (2,381)
• Schools (2,224)
• Sponsors (1,221)
• Former GAA Presidents (771)
• Staff & Sub committees (520)
• Overseas (480)
• Provinces (360)
• Press (254)
• Third-level (240)
• Rounders/Handball (212)
• Local residents (200)
• Mini-games (188)
• National Referee Panel (148)
• Matchday Teams (148)
• Jubilee teams (142)*
• Camogie (140)
• Ladies football (100)
• TV & Radio (74)
• Sport Ireland (60)

Which of these allocations included my local GAA club? Top one I assume?

And how many past presidents has there been in the GAA? Splitting 771 between them, seems excessive.

Yea, your local club is in the 'county allocations' number. It's a pity that's not split into competing and non competing counties although, as I mentioned earlier, 32k has gone to clare and cork combined this year so far (sometimes a second allocation can go out on the week before if not all the non competing allocations are taken up).

The president changes every 3 years I think so they obviously seem to be well looked after!

Yea, think so although it might still be decided county by county but I think most counties do it - current county players also are entitled to 2 each - the county boards would give these out from their allocations.

It's much the same every year, although the capacity used to be 82,200

Former GAA Presidents (771)

Strange one..there have been less than 40 Presidents and a fair chunk of them have sadly suffled off this mortal coil a long time. Even if their spouse/kids get 2 , it is a huge amount

It would vary from county to county. They'd usually get a few free and then the option to buy some more - I'd imagine 10/12 but I'm not sure.

No mention of the politicians who get tickets. Why do Sports Ireland get so many? Are there not rules in place about civil and public servants receiving gifts or goods and services in kind?

Why can't they allocate the final tickets like the other games ??

No doubt 'parties/sponsors' etc are still getting tickets for other championship games along with the people who have the Croke Park premium/corporate box's

Definitely but then we have the stubborn 'cash only' types who feel it's 'discrimination' etc

The season ticket for both codes is (was) open to any genuine fan in Galway. No need to worry about a Final ticket then. Only 19k showed up to the Connacht Final this year and that includes Mayo fans who tend to travel well. We only had 7k for a crucial group game v Derry.

I believe only Dublin, Mayo & the Limerick hurlers have season ticket waiting lists as of right now.

End of the day, if you're a genuine fan you can make sure you have access to a ticket, this cribbing about clubs making a few quid via lotteries because some Johnny Come Lately who went to the QF/SF now thinks he deserves one is kind of embarrassing tbh. Don't come at me with the cost of it either, I bet anyone cribbing about that spends more down the pub in a month than the entire season ticket costs. Either way, its well within the budget of anyone making even minimum wage in Ireland tbh.

We get the same garbage every year about AIF tickets, fact of the matter is if you really want to make sure you're there you either do sufficient volunteering with your club to get to the top of that list or you cut out the middleman and get a season ticket. End of story.

That’s bullshit and completely unfair. Season ticket is horrible value. The only time there’s value to it is if your team gets to an All-Ireland final as it guarantees your ticket.

Season tickets will be gone in the next few years. GAA don’t like it and have stripped it back year-on-year

You’re not getting the league tickets for free. You’re paying for them with the cost of the season ticket!!

If you actually are a true supporter and go to the league matches, then the whole thing is cost neutral.

20 euro for division one league game and season ticket is 140 so you get 7 league games if u get to knock out stage of the league.

Season ticket is a great job but lads don't want to spend the money unless they think they will get the options to buy the all Ireland ticket which is the wrong way to look at it.

Yeah for some reason I seem to remember reading some time back that TD's were given tickets for the All Ireland Finals. Maybe it was around the time Danny Healy Rae was pictured asleep at a hurling final.

Theres over 700 tickets going to past presidents. Thats a joke right there. Over 70k worth of tickets distributed between what, 7 or 8 people?

The vast majority of tickets should go to the counties involved. It takes away from the occasion when you have people sitting the the stands who have little to no interest in being there. I have been sitting beside people in the past who were reading books or scrolling through their instagram/facebook. They were obviously brought "up to Dublin" for the weekend by a partner who wanted to attend the game and they ended up tagging along rather than sitting in the hotel until they got back.

The last raffle I was at was very interesting, because the people who ran the raffle, actually won it! So it's not unusual for that to happen, now and again

Look the season ticket suits some and not others.

I think it's a good scheme albeit the benefits have lessened a bit in recent years