BT Sport keen on bidding for GAA TV rights

BT Sport yesterday expressed an interest in bidding for a slice of the GAA’s television rights package the next time they’re up for negotiation, with a senior figure in the organisation saying he hoped the timing "would fit BT’s strategy".

Grant Best, Emmy award-winning executive channel producer with BT Sport, was speaking at The Business of Sports Science conference at the RDS when he described Gaelic games as “exciting” and a ratings winner.

“We look at all sports rights,” said Best. “Right now we are concentrating on football, we have exclusive rights to the Champions League and the Europa League, those are the next big things for us.

“But we are always looking at a range of rights. I was just chatting to Paul McGinley about the GAA and it looks exciting, doesn’t it? It’s very entertaining and I know that terrestrial TV gets very good ratings for it.

“It’s a sport which is full of entertainment and Sky have those rights at the moment. Sky have been going for a long time and they have a good range of sports outside football and rugby — they have golf, cricket and so on.

“We all wait until those cycles come around again to try to bid, but we’re interested in adding to our portfolio. Sky have a lot of deals tied up but when those rights come back around we hope that the timing is good and that it will fit our strategy.”

Sky, which signed a three-year deal with the GAA last April in a move criticised widely because it meant Gaelic games were removed from free-to-air television, has lost out to BT Sport in the past when it comes to rights negotiations.

In 2013 BT Sport paid £897m for Champions League coverage from the 2015-6 season.