Sport Ireland pays €80k for 'influencers' to help promote campaigns
Former rugby stars John Hayes and Tommy Bowe (pictured) were paid €5,000 and €7,500 respectively to advocate for separate Sport Ireland awareness campaigns in 2020 and 2021. Picture: Andres Poveda
The body with responsibility for promoting the development of sport in Ireland has spent more than €80,000 on employing "influencers" since 2019.
Sport Ireland said that social media and celebrity influencers, including some former and active sports figures, have been used on 27 occasions to further their campaigns, ranging in scope from keeping people healthy to advocating a return to sport post-Covid-19.
Former rugby stars John Hayes and Tommy Bowe were paid €5,000 and €7,500 respectively to advocate for separate Sport Ireland awareness campaigns in 2020 and 2021, with both making media appearances and posting to social media as part of the deal.
Former 2FM DJ Eoghan McDermott was paid €4,000 in 2020 to promote the European Week of Sport, which included a commitment to several media interviews and four social media posts.
The information was revealed by Sport Ireland in response to a parliamentary question from Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy.
Other influencers and celebrities include Virgin Media presenter and actor Simon Delaney, who was paid €6,500 for “influencer activity”, activist and journalist Joanne O’Riordan (€1,100), and influencer Ailbhe Garrihy, sister of RTÉ DJ Doireann, who was paid €8,000 for social media posts relating to Sport Ireland’s campaign in 2021.
By a distance, the highest-paid influencer used by Sport Ireland was Tadhg Fleming, a Co Kerry content creator with 2.9 million followers on TikTok.
Mr Fleming, who first went viral in 2017 via a video of a bat flying around his family kitchen, was paid €12,000 for a series of social media posts and stories for Sport Ireland’s campaign.
His reach was the largest recorded for any of the influencer-specific campaigns run by the body, with his TikTok and Facebook stories reaching 156,000 and 320,000 people respectively.
Former Cork hurler and disability activist Jamie Wall achieved 139,000 impressions for a round of media interviews and Instagram stories as part of the same campaign for €2,000.
Just two of the people featuring in the various Sport Ireland campaigns were used on more than one occasion – Olympic runner David Gillick who was paid just under €6,400, and basketball star and RTÉ presenter Emer O’Neill, who was paid €7,500 for two separate jobs, including an eight-part video series on family fitness.
Sport Ireland said that the individuals chosen for some campaigns were selected on the back of market research, with others being picked in terms of their suitability to target audiences.
It said that all payments were made by the agencies involved in each campaign, and did not come from Sport Ireland directly.
It said that the variance in payments was dependent on a number of factors, including "the campaign requirements, time commitments, nature of the work required and location of the work”.
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