Dónal Óg Cusack: GAA failing hurling by putting it on GAAGO

Dónal Óg Cusack believes the GAA is failing hurling by putting championship matches behind a paywall.

The 2024 GAAGO schedule was announced today, with nine hurling championship (five Leinster and four Munster), 22 football championship and seven Tailteann Cup games only available on the GAA-RTÉ co-owned subscription platform, the same number as in 2023.

In 2022, the last year of their rights, satellite subscriber Sky Sports had five hurling and nine football exclusives.

RTÉ Sport showed 17 hurling and 18 football championship games in both 2023 and 2022.

"We have said for many years that hurling needs growth, hurling needs oxygen," three-time All-Ireland winner Óg Cusack told RTÉ News.

"This does nothing for the promotion of hurling. One of the purposes of the GAA is surely to grow the game of hurling. In its duty, as it has acted as a steward over many years, it has failed in that role.

"There are also question marks for RTÉ. As a public service body, surely one of their duties is to promote a cultural asset like hurling. They are failing to do that with this deal also.

"Someone in Croke Park and someone in Montrose... thought it was a good idea to make a small amount of profit next year, or a perceived profit in the future, on the back of hurling and it does nothing for the game.

"The government should come into this and take a serious look because I believe both institutions are not doing their duty in this case."

Three of four Cork's Munster SHC round-robin games will be on the PPV platform. GAA president Larry McCarthy said today that it was either that or not show them at all after RTÉ selected different fixtures on the same day for broadcast.

"I don’t buy that for a minute," was Cusack’s response.

"There are probably more