Question: How hard will the recession hit?

WITH a deepening recession, the soaring popularity of rugby and dwindling stadium attendances, the GAA faces a barrage of difficulties entering the Championship.

Yet the GAA’s commercial manager Dermot Power is positive that the organisation will successfully promote their flagship competitions. “The big thing we’re doing in our promotions this year is more activities at local and provincial level. We have national launches and TV campaigns but we feel the best way to promote the games is to do it locally. It can’t be all about the big games in Croke Park, the provincial matches are just as important.

“So the provincial councils are much more active this year, as shown by the fact that they’ve all held provincial launches. Look at what the Munster Council have done by creating ticket packages for this year’s championships. That’s really innovative and good targeting of their market. The local media is key as well, more so than the national media in this sense. A great example during the National League was the Tipperary v Cork match in Semple Stadium. It was Valentine’s Night, Cork didn’t have all their stars and it was still a brilliant occasion with nearly 10,000 people there. There was a great job done in promoting that locally.

“All of these measures have come out of our strategic plan, it’s not just a case that we’re reacting to the economy, we’ve been trying to introduce these over the last couple of years. We used that model for the league, which helped to give us an indication of where we were at. Some counties did a really great job and our attendances were not bad during the league. I think when the final figures are released, they will shock people. When we reduced the prices for the league finals, the main reason was to say thank you to our supporters.

“This is the time of the year for the GAA. In the 1990’s when soccer was on a high, everyone thought that was going to take over. Now everyone thinks the same about rugby. But these things are cyclical. We’re entering the summer and this is when the championship dominates.”