Four Munster counties break €2m barrier as inter-county spending hits new record

MUNSTER SPENDING: All-Ireland senior hurling champions Tipperary leapfrogged Cork as the biggest spenders with €2,483,600. Picture: ©INPHO/Ryan Byrne

Despite two counties cutting team spending, inter-county squad costs in Munster climbed by over €1 million to a record €12.11m in 2025.

For the first time ever, four of the six counties spent over €2m each on preparing their teams this past season – Tipperary, Cork, Limerick and Kerry.

All-Ireland senior hurling champions Tipperary leapfrogged Cork as the biggest spenders with €2,483,600. The senior hurlers’s preparations were €1.318m, although their victory celebrations including a team holiday to South Africa were €540,997 and costs would have been otherwise down on the €2.175m spend in 2024.

All six Munster counties are comfortably in the top 10 spenders in Ireland this past year. Waterford were 14th in 2024 but climbed as a result of an increased spend of over €300,000.

Although they reached a second consecutive All-Ireland SHC final, Cork reported a saving of almost €180,000 on 2024. Liam MacCarthy Cup holders in 2024 Clare also saw their expenditure drop. However, that was expected as their senior hurlers’s season concluded in May and they had no team holiday.

Kerry recorded the biggest jump in spending, almost €500,000, as they lifted the Sam Maguire Cup this year and their team holiday cost to the US and Mexico cost €366,341.

Limerick’s rise in spending was partly down to their footballers’s extended Tailteann Cup run, although expenditure on the hurlers’s side of the house remained high despite them bowing out of the All-Ireland SHC at the quarter-final stage, their earliest exit since 2017.

All of the counties recorded a surplus, which combined made up €4.357m – Cork €1.5m, Tipperary €767,430, Clare €733,649, Limerick €665,721, Kerry €608,000 and Waterford €83,076. As finalists in national championship competitions, Cork, Tipperary, Limerick and Kerry would also have received grants up to €150,000 towards team holidays.

In his report earlier this week, Waterford secretary Pat Flynn reiterated that inter-county costs were unsustainable. Flynn made similar remarks at the end of 2024 and ’23.

“The rising costs associated with county teams continue to place significant pressure on the day-to-day operations of the Board,” Flynn stated as €700,639 was spent on the senior hurling team. “While success on the field is a shared ambition, the current level of expenditure is becoming increasingly unsustainable.” 

Flynn also outlined Waterford’s rejection of the proposal to push the All-Ireland senior football final into August from 2027. Galway and Tipperary have already indicated they will be opposing the motion that comes in front of Congress in February.

“We cannot permit any further reduction in the time allocated for club activity. Those calling for a return to September All-Irelands would appear not to place the clubs’s interests to the fore.” 

Meanwhile, Leitrim have become the ninth county to call on Central Council to sever its commercial relationship with National League and All-Ireland football sponsors Allianz.

A motion put forward by Seán O’Heslin’s, Ballinamore was passed at the county’s annual convention on Wednesday evening. Leitrim join Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh, Offaly, Roscommon and Tyrone in proposing the GAA end its agreement with the multinational insurance company arising from its ties with the genocide in Gaza.