Despite poor viewership numbers, Sky Sports' coverage of the football and hurling championships is set to continue until 2021.
According to the Irish Independent's Colm Keys, the GAA is close to sealing a five-year deal which will see RTÉ and Sky Sports continue as the association's main championship broadcast partners.
Sky Sports GAA deal
Sky Sports first purchased rights to the championships in 2014. That was a three-year deal which saw them acquire exclusive rights to 14 games along with All-Ireland semi-finals and finals.
Championship games not being on terrestrial TV and instead requiring supporters to play a subscription caused controversy at the time and has continued to do so since. The GAA's argument was that the Sky deal brought our games to a new audience.
The new deal is said to be worth approximately €55 million. That per-year number would be in line with the €11.2 million which the GAA earned from the sale of media rights last year.
Despite the controversy, there have been good aspects to Sky's GAA coverage. Their analysis, featuring the likes of Jim McGuinness, James Horgan and Peter Canavan is very good. It regularly focuses on the more tactical elements of the game rather than the vagueness of factors such as hunger and desire which were so often cited in the past as being the differences between teams.
In recent weeks, there was speculation that RTÉ could also acquire the rights to Saturday night National League games but instead those fixtures look set to continue on Eir Sport - the broadcaster previously known as Setanta Sports.
