GAA has big calls to make on streaming offering - Professor Paul Rouse

The departure of Sky Sports from the Gaelic games rights market hs proved as tumultuous as its arrival.

Nine years after contentiously selling some of their championship games to the subscription broadcaster, from 2023, the GAA will take over Sky Sports' former package on its own online streaming platform GAAGO, which is co-owned with main rights holder RTÉ.

Gaelic games historian and former Offaly football manager Paul Rouse was opposed to the Sky deal and feels the GAA faces some crucial decisions about its streaming service in the wake of Sky Sports' exit from the market.

"I was surprised," the UCD professor told the RTÉ GAA podcast of this week's developments. "Against that, Sky's viewership figures were very low and the world has fundamentally changed in terms of how people are accessing sport.

"I disagreed profoundly with the GAA decision to give its games to Sky. But my criticism was not of Sky, it was of the GAA. Ten years ago, the people who ran the GAA said they would never do this, and [then] they advanced reasons for doing it that did not hold water, that it was for emigrants. But it was already the case that all emigrants in Britain could see the games through Premier Sports at a much cheaper price than Sky offered.

"The changes in the market around the pandemic, the development of apps on phones, tablets and smart televisions have redrawn what's possible. So the context of the decision is what matters.

"It’s really exciting, the idea that there is technological change which can be harnessed to promote and develop Gaelic games, even games that are played everywhere, on the smallest field, in the smallest club. If it’s properly served by broadband and you have a camera you can stream.

"It’s the opening up of