Business of Sport "Having spent €30,000 over the last five months we haven't given up hope yet. The news was a blow to our small company but we couldn't afford to take too many hits like that. Why didn't they just tell us from the outset and be up front about it all?"
Frank McNamee, co-founder of Multi-Media Instructional Designs (MMID) and former Longford footballer, still wonders at it all. Why, he asks, did we hear from an Australian minister about the announcement of a new GAA (computer) game? And why is it that the Irish lost the chance to create 12 new jobs and achieve a €2million boost to the economy?
McNamee feels his company were led up the garden path by the GAA and Sony and still wants to fight the fight. "We haven't given up hope just yet, but it is a changed landscape," he concedes. "With Sony in the market you have to ask yourself if you can compete with them. And why does the GAA say it promotes Irish business and Gaelic games when all it is doing is letting an Australian company adapt an Australian Rules game-model?"
MMID are adopting a "wait and see" approach. The GPA will honour their annual agreement with them but come next summer, if there is a "Gaelic Football 2004" on the market, it will be difficult to compete.
Since June, MMID have been developing a fully interactive computer game based on Gaelic football, and their story mirrors the recent fortunes of Irish industry.
"MMID was set up in 2000 as a multimedia company that offered custom-based training on the PC," says McNamee. "Despite the IT bubble bursting, we - a company of only five so - were able to weather the storm . . . we began to explore different markets and looking at ways of diversifying the business."
A former colleague at the Waterford Institute of Technology, Michael McMahon, had been developing a working model of a GAA game. McNamee approached him about commercialising it.
"I knew immediately that the key to the game was using the players' names," continues McNamee. "People support the GAA because they know the players, they're local lads and people come out to follow them and support them. The identity and support of the players is a key ingredient to the success of the GAA in this country.
"The GPA were very receptive and excited by the concept when we approached them and we signed a one-year licence agreement with them giving us use of their members' names. But when we approached the GAA we got nowhere. They refused to meet in person.
"However, in September, I discovered over the Internet that the GAA were in discussions with an Australian company. When I contacted them, the GAA and Sony admitted it but gave the impression our product was still possible.
"We applied for a GAA licence. I certainly didn't expect to read on the back pages of the papers just a week later that a deal had been done in Australia."
The application form for the GAA licence now lies blank on McNamee's desk. And while the GAA await the game's launch and the expected windfall of millions of euro, Frank McNamee is trying to recoup something from the past five months' investment.
"I can accept and appreciate the commercial reality of the market," he says, "but why weren't they up front with us from the outset?"Saturday afternoons will never be the same again. The Irish sports fan will no longer be forced to sit watching Rodney Marsh watching the game in Sky's studio or have to put up with Norwegian broadcasts in pubs.
From next year, Irish fans of the Premiership can expect to pay between €30 and e35 for a season ticket to watch 15 live pay-per-view games, according to a Setanta spokesperson. So is pay-per-view here to stay? And just who are Setanta?
The recent news that RTÉ and Irish media company Setanta signed a joint deal to broadcast the Premiership in Ireland is a telling indicator. 30 games were on offer and while RTÉ were unable to commit that many Saturday afternoons to Premiership soccer, Setanta came on board in a 50-50 deal resulting in 15 free-to-air games from RTÉ and a further 15 pay-per-view ones from Setanta.
Founded in 1992 by Michael O'Rourke and Leonard Ryan, Setanta Sport is a global sports broadcaster with offices in Dublin, London, San Francisco and Sydney broadcasting sports events worldwide, including GAA, soccer and World Cup rugby. Core turnover for 2003 is expected to exceed €23 million.
Setanta are currently in the final year of a two-year deal owning the exclusive rights to the second match in Scotland, which RTÉ broadcast on Saturday or Sunday afternoons (usually involving Celtic).
But it's their experience in providing pay-per-view football that has placed the company - if not in the same league - at least in the same competition as Sky Sports.
While not disclosing just how many people sign up for their pay-per-view matches, the company are willing to describe the projects as "relatively successful" and to say they are looking at ways to develop them further.
The secret to pay-per-view success it seems is in targeting the niche market fans are willing to pay for. When the company broadcast their first Celtic pay-per-view last year -versus Basel in the Champions League - the demand and volume of calls to sign up for the game were so great that Sky's movies and the Celtic match-feed crashed on the Sky system.
The top matches are what people will pay for and when Setanta's current SPL deal expires they will be looking at a different package and one that involves the rights to Old Firm derbies. The Celtic market is expanding through RTÉ's exposure of their League games via the Setanta deal and from next season it will be the turn of the Premiership to gain maximum exposure.
Celtic is undeniably a huge market in Ireland - you can be a Celtic and Liverpool fan or a Man Utd and Celtic fan - but it will be interesting to see how the Irish public react to pay-per-view on the Premiership.
Our love of the English game will be put to the test. The question is: will the fans be willing to pay €35 for Premiership football?
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