Continued broad appeal of Gaelic games highlighted in new report

Nearly two years into the pandemic, the GAA is mulling over some welcome findings in a report analysing the association’s appeal to various audiences.

The two most striking are the extent to which the general sports follower is interested in Gaelic games – two million out of 2.7 million – and the comparatively high proportion of women included in those numbers.

With the second winter of Covid accelerating – GAA recognition came only yesterday with the cancellation of this year’s All Stars banquet – the picture emerging from the report is a useful snapshot of the variety of people who continue to be interested in difficult times.

As Croke Park readied itself this week to reopen as a vaccination centre, stadium and commercial director Peter McKenna outlined the importance of the picture the report painted of the organisation in research completed by Repucom Brand Health Monitor on behalf of the GAA.

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“That’s probably our unique selling proposition. What sponsors are buying is association, including that we are authentically Irish and so on but that can be intangible. In terms of hard data and ‘who are we talking to’, well there are 2.7 million people interested in sport and of that 2.03 million are interested in the GAA and it’s nearly 50-50 male-female.

“Most sports index high on males, generally around 80-20, so that gives a sense, backed up by research that we do speak to a family audience, certainly tilted towards the male but quite evenly divided.”

That global finding of just over 2 million ‘interested’ in the GAA splits as roughly 1.1 million men and 900,000 women.

Broken down into football and hurling, the figures are more interesting, as they show a higher level of interest among women in hurling. There are caveats in all of this. Football is the more popular sport and has a larger audience but the research indicates that the gender divide of those interested in hurling is 51 per cent male and 49 per cent female.

The comparable figures for football are 56-44.

“The thing about data sets like this,” says McKenna, “is that they challenge the orthodoxy in a real way. There are differences between the two even if there is also a lot of similarity but hurling is closer to 50-50. These questions don’t probe the answers so we can only speculate why that is.”

There is an anomaly in the television audience figures, which divide 59-41, male-female overall but 61-39 in terms of the broadcast hurling audience, which McKenna explains is part of a TV characteristic.

“What that shows is that the female audience far prefers to go to a live game, whereas the television audience indexes higher towards the male viewer. People who are interested split reasonably evenly between men and women but from a TV point of view, men tend to watch more than women. The counterpart is that women are more likely to be engaged with the live event.”

Gaelic family

It’s probably important to underline that the data relates to football and hurling only. In other words the findings are careful not to overlap the sports with women’s football and camogie, although as McKenna points out, interest and involvement in the women’s sports clearly helps to create an audience for the male equivalent.

“That’s not explicitly in the research but it has to have an impact. That’s the context and we can’t lose sight of that. It’s the Gaelic family.”

Another difference is the finding that hurling is also more popular among those in the higher professional and management category. This may be affected by the absence of an ‘intermediate management’ category in the hurling responses but it also fits the perception that hurling is the purer game.

These pages once carried – controversially – comments by then taoiseach Éamon de Valera that hurling and rugby were the games best suited to the Irish spirit. That image of hurling has helped to create an exclusive aura, which McKenna believes is part of the game’s appeal even to those who have never played it.

“If you’re not playing it as a kid you’re unlikely to be playing it as an adult. It doesn’t have a huge recreational side to it and it’s about performance at a high skill level.

“I think people from all walks of life are just attracted to the fact that this is an amazing game and quintessentially ours with its ancient history whereas football emerged as a game that’s easier to play – and probably became more popular because of that.

“There’s always a sense that hurling has something special about it – it’s a Unesco sport and all that goes with that – and has a different profile.”

The value of all of this when seeking sponsorship is obvious. It creates access to a broad range of people within society.

Over the past two years the GAA’s revenues have taken a disastrous hit because of the pandemic, which has curtailed all activities. The high points of this year were All-Ireland finals with spectators.

After the emptiness of grounds at last year’s winter championship, the permission to admit half of the Croke Park capacity, 40,000, earlier this year was progress but losses have been considerable.

Biggest item

Last year the biggest item on the revenue side was Government funding. Finance director Ger Mulryan said at the launch of the 2020 accounts that although the association didn't like to be "dependent on anyone" they had needed Government subvention of €18.5 million and "were very grateful to get it".

Commercial income plummeted by about half but the value of sponsorship income held up remarkably well.

“We averaged just over 80 per cent of what our contracted values were over the two years,” according to McKenna. “It’s massive because a number of those companies were feeling the pain themselves. You also had the situation where you’re trying to match the connected messaging and marketing with the time of year.

“You’re talking to people about games that normally go on in the summer, which is ice cream and summer clothes – all those type of things. When you move to the winter, it’s a very different proposition.

“The focus is on things like Christmas presents and the partner companies are in a completely different mindset. They had to pivot and reconsider the messaging they were putting out there – and that was complicated by uncertainty over whether the games would even happen.

“They did but were behind closed doors so you didn’t have that hoopla that goes with it. It was a huge measure of the support these companies had for the GAA as ‘community’ rather than ‘product’.”

That sense of community was emphasised during the early days of lockdown when GAA clubs were to the forefront of many communities’ responses to Covid.

A survey showed that nationwide, 86 per cent of clubs had been “involved with some community response” eg delivery of meals and essential, local information campaigns and other initiatives. Eighty per cent had linked up with local authorities in the delivery of their services.

Whereas that created a very positive perception of the GAA, which drew praise from various public figures, there was a downside during the autumn when it became apparent that celebrations after county finals were taking place in defiance of public health guidelines and in many cases driving clusters of infection.

Justified criticism

McKenna says that sponsors did not make representations about these events, which drew plenty of justified criticism.

“Any large organisation will encounter things like that, events that are not in keeping with their overall values system. They tend to be shortlived unless a very serious situation is allowed to continue, which would see it drag on for some time.”

Last October the GAA took the difficult but necessary decision to call a halt to any uncompleted county championships.

“There weren’t any repercussions. The bigger impression was made by our voluntary work and the community leadership with which the GAA was associated. Dialogue is continuous with our sponsors and we would have been made well aware if they had issues with us because of the impact of that behaviour,” said McKenna.

As year two of Covid draws to what looks like being a difficult close, the GAA has every reason to be happy with where its reputation sits but like everyone else, apprehensive about a future where people will continue to have more on their minds than sporting pastimes.