Ian Mallon: Camogie is booming so why is it in crisis?
CONTROVERSY: Laura Tracey of Cork in action against Julianne Malone of Kilkenny during the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship Final. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile
IN JUST over a year the Camogie Association has secured more than €1.5m in a string of commercial and broadcast deals that make it the envy of almost all sports.
A high-end list of major corporates have agreed fees and contracts to partner with a sport on the rise, thanks to a landmark six-year broadcast deal with RTÉ.
Brands such as Allianz, Electric Ireland, PwC, Very (formerly Littlewoods) and the commercial cherry on top – headline co-sponsors, Glen Dimplex and Carmel Naughton – all invest heavily in the association.
The ‘Dimplex-Naughton’ contract alone will run to many millions by the time the current term closes at the end of the 2026 season, the same duration as the broadcast arrangement.
On top of increases in commercial and broadcast fees, the numbers playing the game have never been stronger with a record amount of participants surging past the 100,000 mark.
Yet, all is not well at the Camogie Association.
The organisation has become gripped by controversy, is accused of a disconnect with players and grassroots, as well as becoming stuck in an identity crisis.
The Pitch understands following a deep analysis of the situation that the issue of integration is having a pervasive effect on the NGB, and all initial positivity around the proposed merger with the GAA is moving towards trepidation and growing uncertainty.
In the way a large company takes over a smaller entity, the key challenge is working out just how much autonomy the Camogie Association will retain, under the umbrella of Croke Park.
There are questions about how the executive function of the association will proceed, or whether various departments including finance, commercial and communications will now have to report into the GAA’s machinery.
Will it continue to have a CEO or President, some of the other questions which the association has not been told?
There are even concerns about whether Camogie players will have access to the best pitches and facilities when it shares an organisational platform with hurling and football.
These issues are of course valid, but with so many unknowns around timelines and functions, and the slow pace of the process, there is an inevitability that fears will grow.
And it is growing.
A brand and image crisis has emerged as the organisation suddenly ended advanced plans to rebrand the organisation with a new logo and corporate identity, long after it had gone out to the market to seek tenders.
A concern from some was whether it would have to change branding again once integration happens, and while the backtrack appeared chaotic the issue highlighted a vacuum of information flow from the GAA to the Camogie Association.
Of immediate disquiet, have been attacks by leading personalities over the organisation’s lack of consultation with its star players over a planned trip to North America – the All Star tour to Calgary, Canada.
The end of May promotion and sporting drive happens to coincide with the beginning of the Championship season.
What should be a golden opportunity to showcase Camogie to a growing and valuable North American audience – with teams due to attend from the US and Canada – is now a full-blown crisis.
First you had 11-time All Star Gemma O’Connor questioning the leadership saying there was a ‘massive disconnect’ between the game’s administrators and players.
Worse still O’Connor said she had spoken to those in charge some years ago about the perceived disconnection, yet here they were again, with nothing seemingly having changed.
“That was one of the main points that we brought up (four years ago), that there is a massive disconnect between the people and Camogie Association at the top level and actual boots on the ground,” said the Cork legend.
“There’s way too much of a disconnect. They’re sitting there making the decision based on how it looks good on paper, but not actually how it works physically on the ground.”
Cork’s Ashling Thompson said “there is absolutely no way” that the trip can take place so close to the start of the championship.
The visit has the full co-operation of the local council in Calgary, Canada, as well as support from Tourism Ireland, and is now in real danger of being pulled.
The Camogie Association felt it did not need to consult with the players for such commercial and marketing activations – except it should know better – particularly when those unpaid players are the ones promoting the brand.
The Pitch understands that the Camogie Association has now brought in the support of a major PR and crisis management firm to help find a solution, in tandem with talks between the body and the GPA.
That the issue blew up during a commercial launch of the Minor Championship with Electric Ireland will not be lost on the sponsor either.
It would be an unfair analysis to suggest that the Camogie Association is paralysed by the uncertainty of integration – but it is certainly challenged in managing the situation, given its relatively small team of just 18 full-time staff.
Where it should be supported is through the steering group, under the chairmanship of former President Mary McAleese, which is now six months into its work without any firm direction yet in place.
The group recently reported that it is now “up and running” through a “comprehensive and thorough listening process”.
For the Camogie Association the time for listening needs to be matched with some firm objectives, strategies and some actual certainty, before confidence erodes entirely.
MORE than one million live viewers are set to watch Ireland v England play for what many of that audience expects to be a historic fourth Grand Slam, Six Nations Championship and Triple Crown winning affair.
A perfect combination of factors will certainly see records broken since RTÉ and Virgin Media’s shared Six Nations rugby rights deal was announced in 2021.
The previous highest television audience for a series game came last season for Ireland’s ultimately agonising defeat to France in Paris, when 818k viewers tuned in — last Sunday’s equally important match-up against Scotland achieved 816k.
Saturday’s tea-time kick-off this weekend against the ‘Auld Enemy’ in the final round of the series, should certainly average more than 850k viewers, with a peak audience of perhaps 1.1m.
The average audience for Six Nations Rugby this season is actually down a little on last year, but the numbers are largely irrelevant without the final match of this year’s campaign, with an average 701k watching Ireland’s five games vs 665k so far this season.
If you take out what was a potential Championship decider against France in Paris in 2022 – even if it was only the second game - then the numbers are almost evenly matched with 672k in 2022 against this year’s 665k.
WHILE the national football teams will go by the corporate and sporting title of ‘Ireland Football’ the FAI has decided not to change its name, in a rebranding exercise that failed in its ultimate goal.
The toxic ‘FAI’ title remains and so the most divisive name in sport lives on, and that will present branding and image problems long into the future.
If eventually a Garda investigation opens into financial irregularities in Irish football, and The Pitch understands that An Garda Siochana have a team at the ready, then it becomes a ‘Garda probe into the FAI’.
If anything ever went to trial, that would then become a showcase, and an event which would see unprecedented negative publicity – yes, even after everything we’ve seen up to now.
And all the while you will have the newly rebranded FAI watching from the wings, but more importantly, its sponsors and commercial partners becoming showered with the collateral damage that will follow.
It must be said that nobody has been charged or convicted with any misdemeanours, so for now, the FAI rebrand is just a reinforcement of a name that carries an awful lot of baggage.
