New app will connect GAA fans worldwide

It was inevitable: a GAA-specific social media platform.

The folks behind GAAther.ie were at Web Summit yesterday and they outlined the thinking behind their app, GAAther.

“It’s a Gaelic games social network,” said Dan Bannon.

“We think with the passion behind Gaelic games, there’s a market for a network like this.

“There are 2,000 GAA clubs in Ireland and 400 around the world — there’s a club on every continent, so we decided to try to connect GAA fans all over the world, and to cut down on the work for club PROs.

“Any person going to a game can broadcast a match, give live scores — and it’s not all lost in the noise. It’s a GAAcentric site.”

Sean McKeown adds his experience: “A couple of years ago my son Michael went to Boston, playing football, and we were in Germany and couldn’t follow whether he was playing, whether he’d lost.

“Dan’s brother was in Australia and couldn’t follow how his club were doing — every village in Ireland has people overseas who’d like to know how the club at home is doing.”

Clubs in Asia and Australia have already been in touch, asking how they can use the app.

“We’ve had a prototype up and running for a couple of months,” says McKeown.

“We gave it to local clubs and to people overseas from those clubs for feedback, and that’s been positive.

“The app’s been redesigned as a result of that feedback, and we feel it’s smoother now. We’re at the Web Summit looking for investment, that’s the next step.

“We have everything in place — the software team is in place, for instance, and we’d like to be in place for March next year for the 2016 GAA season.

“And from the reaction at the Web Summit, a lot of people are very surprised at how advanced our plans are already — we have a lot of skills in-house.”

Seamus Maguire adds: “This provides a platform for every game that’s played — this will give PROs an internal communication platform, they can also notify players of training and so on.

“So it works internally as well, within the club, it provides one space for all club communications, one that’s very safe.”

McKeown makes the obvious comparison: “What you find is that your timeline on Twitter or Facebook can get cluttered with other stuff, and it’s hard to follow what’s happening in any given match.

“With GAAther anyone can give updates from the game — a fan or supporter can tell people what’s going on with a team’s games when those games don’t figure in the media.

“I know that clubs have PROs but a lot of the time they’re so busy they can’t cover all the games a club is playing and club websites often aren’t updated regularly anyway — usually it’s left to one person to do the updates, and they may not always be able to do that.”

• For more information go to www.gaather.ie