GAA still learning in marketing era

On Gaelic Games: There used to be an indignant mantra at congresses gone by, which ran along the lines that the GAA should be marketing their games like Sky Sports did with the soccer.

This was in the days when the entire championship was organised on a knockout basis with top teams frequently gone by the end of May and around the time when the attitude to live broadcasting of matches was thawing only sufficiently to allow deferred coverage.

The search for deliverance by marketing demonstrated both naivety and misunderstanding. For a start, as listed above, the shortcomings in the product at that stage were formidable and no one can market a tandem as a limousine. Then there was (and remains to some extent) the confusion between marketing, promotion and advertising.

Roughly distinguished, advertising simply informs people that something is taking place; promotion persuades people to attend either by emphasising the importance of what's happening or by special offer but marketing takes the event and makes it as attractive as possible.

Little by little the championship schedules have evolved to the point where championship attendances have risen from 917,287 in 1995 (the last year of purely sudden death format) to well over 2 million nowadays.

Next Saturday's now sold-out National Football League opening match between Dublin and Tyrone is the latest example of effective marketing by the GAA. But the original template was that of International Rules and particularly last year's series.

The decision to locate the first Test in Galway created interest as the first regional venue for 22 years and also with its modest capacity of around 30,000 guaranteed a sell-out. It also meant that there would be only one opportunity to watch in Dublin, which funnelled all the spectators to the second Test.

Obviously the close finish to the first Test enhanced interest in the second but by that stage virtually all of the tickets had been sold anyway.

Those are the bare bones of the organisational structure that was built up before the advertising and promotion were added to the mix. Now ask yourself would the GAA 10 years ago or even now agree to hand over its fixture making for the championship and the selection of times and venues to a marketing sub-committee, tasked with maximising exposure? Danny Lynch, the GAA's national PRO, said last week that a number of dynamics had driven the demand that made Dublin-Tyrone such a success. Most significantly there is the unveiling of the Croke Park floodlights for the first time.

The pairing is also a good one on a couple of levels: Tyrone have good support and their recent history with Dublin in league matches has been edgy.

But beyond all of that is a sense within the GAA that this is a big occasion for the association, an opportunity to fill the ground ahead of the arrival of the first rugby international at the end of next week.

Notwithstanding the positive nature of the experiment GAA director general Liam Mulvihill was a little downbeat about the prospect of further league matches at Croke Park. The need for at least 50,000 to attend matches if any sort of decent atmosphere is to be created limits the range of fixtures that could credibly be staged at headquarters.

Mulvihill also candidly acknowledged that it was impossible to predict the directions in which competitions might develop in the future and the implications for the Croke Park lights.

This uncertainty covers the possibility of championship matches being played at night but apart from there being less need for lights during the summer, there are residents' concerns and the inconvenience of travelling supporters to be considered.

The one event that would be a clear candidate for staging under lights at Croke Park is an International Rules Test but the series is now in abeyance pending this year's review. It's a further irony that just as the gates have been opened to the internationals of other sports, the GAA has dropped its only comparable outlet.

So for the foreseeable future after Saturday it looks as if soccer and rugby will be the only sports taking place in the new floodlit facility.

On the subject of those imminent internationals it was interesting to filter reactions to the comments of Michael Greenan last week.

Whereas it might have been disingenuous of the outgoing Ulster chair to push the argument that the 2005 congress had been sold a pup - in that there was virtually no discussion about when the precise moment at which the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road could be said to have begun and the vast majority of contributors who spoke in favour of relaxing Rule 42 would have consented to a more expansive, generous motion, such as the one so nearly passed in 2001 - his views were, as the rugby fraternity have taken to saying about the recent eclipse of Irish provinces, a reality check.

There's no point in trying to avoid that although Greenan's views are distinctly minority, they represent a doggedly held view that the opening of Croke Park is a bad thing for the GAA in the long run.

Such views were given a lift two weeks ago when a loud tumult developed about the duty of the GAA to make some of its other grounds available to Munster and Leinster for their home semi-finals and even quarter-finals in the European Cup. Although the rugby authorities weren't implicated, even within the GAA's national administration there was dismay at the manner in which these strident demands had surfaced.

We can't say whether there was grim satisfaction within the GAA at the subsequent fate of the Irish provinces but we can certainly say there was relief at being spared a firestorm of negative, carping publicity.

Greenan's intervention was privately viewed in Croke Park as not being without its uses in that it showed his views still exist within the organisation and that making assumptions on the basis of the 2005 gesture would be unwise for the moment.

Marketing is all very well but sometimes it makes sense not to airbrush away certain realities, however disagreeable.