Murphy: GAA should set up own TV station

ONE of the GAA’s leading officials believes the Association should set up its own TV station to promote football and hurling abroad.

Ulster secretary Danny Murphy made the comments at yesterday’s launch of the Ulster Football Championship at a picturesque Belfast Castle where he stated the GAA faces a “major decision” over the issue of developing their brand internationally.

“Literally, there is a huge amount of the Irish diaspora and, with a level of work, I believe hurling could be made a very marketable product anywhere in the world. If you look at some of the excellent games like the NHL final we then have a product that people interested in ice hockey and lacrosse in the US would see tremendous interest in.

“I believe the GAA, sooner or later, has to set up its own TV channel and how it actually maximises its recovery against a world market is something they would have to look at. Whether we ever go to full pay-per-view, I wouldn’t be that comfortable with going there, but we could go possibly go to subscription whereby in the digital age, for a one-off figure, people could have access to our games anywhere in the world. That would be doable.”

While any GAA TV channel would not operate in Ireland, Murphy was keen to point out there were serious broadcasting issues that need to be addressed by the Association on these shores. Over the next few years digital TV will replace the current terrestrial analogue system but the process is proceeding at a much faster pace north of the border, where the old signal is due to be cut off long before anything similar happens in the Republic.

That would leave viewers in the north unable to access any stations still operating on analogue signals, which could potentially include hurling and football championship programming broadcast from the south.

“I believe very strongly we are in danger here of setting up something that works and halfway through the season we might find that there is a resistance to it. At the end of the day I believe we are where we are and the issue of the digital age is a big factor for us in Ulster because, at this moment in time, almost 90% of the people are on digital television.

“So, regardless of what happens on the world market, what’s going to happen here by the end of 2010 in the six counties in the north is that 100% of them are going to be on digital television. If it’s not on digital television it won’t be available to us. So these are the issues that have to be addressed. It is not just the channel and the lucrative nature of it. The important part of the GAA’s work is to make our games as widely accessible as possible.”