With Oasis in August, GAA's financial realities keep 2025 All-Irelands in July

A full-house view of the Cork v Clare All-Ireland hurling final at Croke Park. Pic: Larry Cummins

One split healed, another remained on Tuesday morning as a couple of Manchester-Irish brothers effectively confirmed the demarcation line in the structure of the GAA calendar will remain in July.

This week 15 years ago was the last time Liam and Noel Gallagher shared a stage, a couple of days before Kerry battled their way past Meath, the birthplace of their estranged father Tommy, in an All-Ireland SFC semi-final.

Unless there is a replay, it is likely that at least four years will have passed before another male senior inter-county championship game has been played in August.

Oasis’ presence in Croke Park on August 16 and 17, 2025 has all but sealed that. The All-Ireland hurling and football finals are scheduled to take place on July 20 and 27 respectively.

The news marked a success for a couple of sections in Croke Park. Even if the retention of July All-Ireland finals would have better coming from Central Council where the season was to be debated next week instead of a music promotions company, the commercial department will be delighted to have secured the gigs, which are sure to sell out.

They most certainly want the All-Ireland championships to be played in August but as the media revenue generated by a shortened inter-county season declines they couldn’t miss out on the opportunity to compensate for that. Besides, if there was a truly concerted determination to push the inter-county season into August, the announcement wouldn’t have happened.

A retention of the July All-Ireland finals had been what the Central Competitions Control Committee (CCCC) had lobbied for earlier this summer and they will be pleased to have secured it.

That’s not to say the concerns about the condensed inter-county season will go away. They’ve only been parked as priority has been given to the Football Review Committee’s proposals at Special Congress on November 30 and the change to the structure of the All-Ireland senior football championship.

It is hoped improving the game as a spectacle by rule change while unloading the championship – there will be eight less games in each of the Sam Maguire and Tailteann Cups as part of the restructure that is garnering most support – will arrest the slide in attendances this year.

That new backdoor/winners and losers round format proposed by the CCCC will be put to Central Council for endorsement next week with a mind to disbanding the All-Ireland group stages. Instead, the winners of the last 16 games (the eight provincial finalists on one side of the draw) will clash in Round 2A and the losers in 2B.

The Round 2A winners will progress to the quarter-finals where they will be joined by who comes through the preliminary quarter-finals which pits the four Round 2A losers versus Round 2B winners.

It’s a superior plan to the current format but there remain pinch-points because of the compacted schedule. The imbalance in quantity, never mind quality of the provinces means the Leinster and Ulster finalists will only have a one-week turnaround from their last 16 and Round 2A/2B games while the four from Connacht and Munster have two.

Consider too that as part of the provisional schedule incorporating the new football format the Round 2A/2B games from which four teams will qualify for quarter-finals and another quartet go out, are on the same weekend as the Munster and Leinster hurling finals.

Also, it appears the All-Ireland finals will be played on successive weekends for the fourth season in a row. GAA president Jarlath Burns in June expressed his wish to give each game more space for promotion purposes but that idea now appears to be on the backburner.

And the same genuine complaints about the paltry profile hurling is afforded by the calendar will be made again next year. A 13-week Liam MacCarthy Cup remains tight, while a weekend in the middle featuring the four Tailteann Cup quarter-finals and traditionally one-sided All-Ireland preliminary quarter-finals in June seems lost.

The following weekend, the All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals are again pencilled in alongside the Tailteann Cup semi-finals and the All-Ireland preliminary football quarter-finals. Which games will take Sunday and broadcasting precedence?

Tuesday morning’s announcement will also likely knock Sky Sports out of contention for the two championship media rights bundles the GAA made available earlier this month. Had the championship extended into August, they would have been keener but GAAGO had been expected to regain those packages.

The GAA have done their sums, though. This year’s six concerts at GAA HQ – Bruce Springsteen in May, AC/DC last Saturday week and Coldplay’s upcoming four nights from this Thursday – will accrue rent of close to €7 million. In 12 months’ time, Oasis will bring in over €2m.

Bearing in mind that the GAA’s gate receipts for 2024 are expected to drop by around that figure, the chance to offset that loss will be music to their ears even if it means another compressed inter-county season.