The Future of GAA Media

One piece of sports content that has knocked it out of the park, and three championship-calibre takeaways to make you a better marketer — game on!

This Week’s Game Plan:

The GAA is facing a crisis. It’s not declining viewership, it’s not the erosion of the product and the new rules being brought in, it’s not even the GAAGo Scandal that reached as far as government chambers this year.

Instead, it’s a crisis of identity.

Ireland’s national games have, since their inception, been rooted in community and an ethos of amateurism. However, as money continues to flow into our games and things become increasingly commercialised, this is being challenged.

Now, this isn’t exactly new territory. The GAA has been dealing with increased professionalism for years. Adopting on-field tactics from other sports, payments for managers that pass under the table (albeit a table made of the clearest glass imaginable), and the rise of the GAA celebrity have all seen the sports veer away from their amateur roots — you can blame Bernard Brogan for that last one.

This time it’s different though. We’re rapidly approaching an impasse. And it all centres around how the sports are marketed…let me explain.

A sport fighting with the future

As I mentioned, Gaelic games have already been exposed to huge amounts of professionalism in recent years when it comes to the sports themselves. Tactics, sports science, even player preparation and team logistics are all at professional levels. But the operations side of the GAA has been slow to catch up. Yes, the GAA makes boatloads of money (€112 million in 2023 to be precise), but it doesn’t really like to overly publicise the business side of it, and this is reflected in how the games are marketed.

As other sports have upped their game over time when it comes to marketing — and particularly content creation — the GAA has remained relatively stagnant. This has led to a weird vacuum, where there’s such a huge outcry for more content to match other sports, but a real lack of culture around it to meet the demand.

Individual counties have caught on, and their presence on social channels have slowly but surely expanded. Some counties have fantastic presences now, with social media becoming arguably the main source for fixtures, team news, and even results. Clubs and colleges are catching on too, with the role of club PRO now often doubling up as social media coordinator. As always, those with resources and money tend to do a better job — although there are always exceptions.

Major media houses have followed, but there may be some thinking that the juice really isn’t worth the squeeze. Despite the massive global Irish diaspora, Gaelic games are relatively niche sports that don’t warrant major investment by content houses outside of Ireland, Sky gave it a go, and the BBC’s productions have received rave reviews, but it’s always going to be hard to get real investment or innovation from the top down.

But there’s another way.

The creator economy is booming, even in Ireland where conservatism and tall poppy syndrome are rampant. Smaller creators are carving out their own niches and flourishing, and this includes within the GAA. We see GAA PTs targeting improving other players, comedy acts leaning on common GAA tropes, and even players themselves getting in on the act by generating large social followings and creating content.

Former players and journalists are also getting involved, taking a leaf out of the books of other more established sports to define their media blueprint. Podcasts, in particular, are thriving as people look for more content, with the most successful focusing on either analysis from former players who have insight the average fan doesn't, or examining the stories behind the players, giving us a look behind the curtain and humanising it — reaching back to the sport’s amateur roots.

This all begs the question though, what exactly is next for the GAA?

Have we already seen the blueprint?

Like I said at the beginning of this piece, the GAA is facing a crisis of identity. When it comes to solving it, I believe the best place to look is to other, more established sports. The GAA will likely follow the route of Premier League football when it comes to content marketing, as it’s simply the closest reference point most people involved have when it comes to developing content.

In my lifetime, Premier League content has evolved from simply review and analysis shows once a week to a now unyielding industry where thousands of hours of content are produced on all platforms every single day. Highlights shows, podcasts, YouTube breakdowns, game shows, even influencer-led teams — all of these contribute to the vast web that is premier league content.

These ideas will be adapted and fit to the modern GAA, and if the people who run the organisation are clever, they’ll embrace this and lean into it. Because, eventually, there will come a point where there simply won’t be a choice.

In an increasingly social world, athletes from different sports are constantly influencing one another. Celebrations regularly cross codes and there’s a growing sense of respect among the men and women in the arena. How long until the next GAA highlight blows up in the global media? We’ve already seen Robert Downey’s wondergoal from the All-Ireland final featured on ESPN, and Pat McAfee — one of the biggest sports creator success stories — regularly praise kickers coming from Gaelic football.

The crossover is inevitable, it’s just been all one-sided so far, with GAA personalities borrowing from their cross-code peers. Will we someday see an NBA player imitate a famous GAA celebration? Who knows, but the idea isn’t as far-fetched as it would have been five years ago.

The speed of change is only going to continue to accelerate, and the GAA hierarchy is going to have to adapt — and quickly. Already we’ve heard current hurler of the year Shane O’Donnell speak critically of how the organisation handles the image rights of players in a fantastic interview by The GAA Social podcast (a great example of modern GAA media done correctly by the way).

Players are waking up to the realisation that there’s a lot of money in the GAA, and the vast majority of it comes from their exploits.

I’m not calling for players to be paid (although I’m not exactly against it either), but I wouldn’t be surprised if a push for something similar to the breakthrough NIL payments seen in American collegiate sports, albeit at a much smaller scale, starts getting discussed — in hushed corners at intercounty training sessions at the very least.

The modernisation of the GAA has already begun, it’s impossible to reverse it now. Content and sports are intrinsically linked, both captivating with storytelling just using different methods. The face of our national sports will look very different in another five years, and content is likely to be at the very forefront of this evolution.

So, what does all of this mean for us marketers then?

Post Game Analysis

1. There’s always room for disruption.

If you told people ten years ago that there was money to be made in talking about GAA you’d have been laughed out of the room. Analysing and commentating on games was reserved for journalists in traditional media, and drunken men on tall stools at bars across the country.

Now, it’s likely that some of the very same people that would have laughed are the ones wishing they had started a podcast or a YouTube channel around the sports they love when they had the chance. We’ve seen it in global sports too. The explosion of content creation around soccer, basketball, and American football has created million-dollar industries on the backs of regular people who simply started creating. So start creating!

2. Sports — and industries — regularly look to competitors for inspiration.

We’re already seeing ideas from other sports, particularly the Premier League in England, bleed over into GAA. The Premier League, in turn, has very obviously been influenced by how American sports handle their media and content. Everyone is always looking to copy formats that work.

Use this to your advantage. Look at your competitors, look at your industry as a whole, but also look outside your industry. Fashion and beauty brands do some of the best influencer marketing and user-generated content (UGC), real estate often has brilliant print media — borrow their strategies and adapt to create something truly unique within your niche or industry.

3. People want to hear from people.

There will always be a place for huge brand campaigns, and the power of brand will never truly leave. However, for most marketers, there could be even more value in focusing on the human side of your brand. We’re seeing this in Gaelic Games, where despite increased professionalism in the sports there’s still a demand for the stories behind the people involved. Some of the most successful content productions have kept the players or the community at the core of the content.

For your own marketing, make sure to highlight the personal side. This could be using your own voice more as you develop your personal brand to avoid sounding like a company. Or, if working a more typical marketing job, it could mean leveraging the people at your company to generate human-centric content for your brand. Founder stories, behind the scenes looks, or employee interviews can all make exceptional content — particularly for recruitment-focused employer branding campaigns!

I hope you enjoyed my rambles on the state of marketing in the GAA and what may be coming next. If you did — or even if you didn’t — let me know in a reply.

If you’re feeling really generous you could also share this with a friend you think might enjoy it so we can grow the Social Setpiece Squad even more.

See you all next week.

PB ✌🏼