When the Kerry GAA convention passed a motion last week calling for all televised championship matches to return to a free-to-air platform, county board chairman Patrick O'Sullivan commented that 'you have to see how people in some parts of the country look at this. On the western seaboard it’s very different to Dublin, where the economic upturn has been a lot faster. The decision to deal with Sky was taken when money was continuing to get a lot tighter for people'.
However, the uprising against the Sky deal is not just confined to western shores. Dublin is now declaring the opposition to the Sky Sports deal.
Inner city club St. Joseph's O'Connell Boys placed a motion before Dublin Convention last night saying that 'All televised inter-county championship games shall be available on free-to-air TV'.
Those proposing the motion believe that, 'it is Congress that should determine the association's policy in this matter and they were never allowed a say in the matter in the first place.'
It was adopted on an almost unanimous show of hands.
Sky Sports viewing figures for the 2015 All-Ireland hurling final represented a dramatic decline of the 2014 figures. The average viewing figures for the Kilkenny-Galway final was only 32,000, compared to 104,000 from the previous year.
