GAA director general Tom Ryan says the gap in the GAA's finances could be €60m if the All-Ireland championships are not played this year, and that they will look “significantly different” if sport is able to return towards the tail end of the year.
Speaking to the Sport for Business podcast, Ryan gave the clearest insight so far as to how the current Covid-19 crisis will affect the GAA, both financially and on the field.
Playing off the remainder of the National Leagues “interspersed” through the championship is one possibility the GAA are looking at if the season is resumed in time.
However, Ryan admitted that while finishing the leagues was ideal because of promotion and relegation, he gave the strongest indication yet that the tier two championship is under significant threat.
“That’s a difficult one, for two reasons. First of all, it does pre-suppose that the leagues are completed. Secondly, it’s fitting in the footprint of that in what would be a very, very truncated tail end of the year,” he said.
The Carlow native said that they must also take into account the need to leave “plenty of space” for club championships and, if possible, leagues.
However, he conceded that the association is treading a fine line financially. The GAA annually puts almost all of its income, around 85 per cent, back out into clubs, counties and capital projects.
That has left them struggling for cash at what Ryan described as “the bottom of our cash cycle anyway… we bring in the cash at the tail end of the year”.
Ryan, who said it felt “a bit churlish to be talking about these things” in the current situation, revealed that €60m was the potential figure the GAA could miss out on through the various revenue streams created by the games, such as gate receipts and broadcast rights.
“We’ve got to manage things pretty carefully now to make that no matter bad this year is, that we’re not paying for the legacy of 2020 in 2021, 2022 and so on.”
