It was reported in today's Irish Independent that the GAA could lose €15 million over three years should a motion at Congress this weekend requiring the GAA to ensure all broadcast rights are sold to free to air TV be upheld.
Listen to a segment of the interview with Rouse on our daily sports podcast, The Racket:
The motion is put forward by the Dublin County Board, and will need a two-thirds majority to be passed.
The report stated that the GAA could lose around five million euro for each of the next three years should the Association be denied the chance to sell their rights to Sky Sports.
Balls.ie spoke to Paul Rouse - author of Sport and Ireland: A History and a lecturer in Irish history and sports history in UCD - and he rubbished this report, saying that the report is tantamount to "scare stories" based on "invented figures":
I think it is a fair reflection of the position of those people who try to argue that the Sky deal has been good for the GAA is all they have been left with is to launch scare stories around invented figures quoting anonymous sources.
If that is the extent of the argument in support of keeping the GAA and Sky together, it is a remarkably clear representation of the way things stand.
I don't know who planted a story like this - which remarkably enough appears in the papers two days before the decision on Sky - quoted from anonymous sources, in no clear setting out of the facts involved and, of course, as usual there is no acknowldegement that the forces of upheaval against the Sky deal comes from ordinary GAA members and ordinary GAA clubs across the country.
Rouse says that the report claims that the GAA's income from media rights would be halved should they lose out to Sky, another point which Rouse strongly disagrees with, as it shows total disregard for other potential bidders including TV3, UTV Ireland and Setanta Sports, who were recently acquired by Eir.
What it [the newspaper report] argues is that the GAA's media rights will be cut in half - that is a ludicrous proposition - and the idea that the GAA will lose any money on their media rights is entirely unproven.
The idea that the TV market here depends on Sky to keep it buoyant is rubbish, and anyone who doubts it is rubbish should look at the bidding between TV3 and RTE for rugby in recent years. There's been no decline in rugby's television value, in fact there has been a huge increase.
The notion that Sky drove up the price the last time is also rubbish: Sky paid a very small amount extra than what TV3 paid the previous time.
Rouse is extremely critical of the GAA's decision to sell a portion of their exclusive broadcast rights to Sky Sports, saying that it is against the spirit of the organisation:
The facts are these. When the GAA did a deal with Sky it immediately disenfranchised up to 90% of its membership, because that is the extent of the drop off, on average, based on viewership figures. Those are unpallatable facts for the GAA, but facts they are nonetheless.
Sky Sports are excellent at what they do. This was a great deal for Sky, they got a high quality product for their TV Screens at a time when those screens were largely empty.
The bad aspect of this was for the ordinary GAA member.
The facts are clear: more people watched Judge Judy on TV3 on a Thursday afternoon than a premium hurling match between Clare and Cork in the All Ireland Championship.
More people watched Oireachtas Report after in mindinght in June than the Cork/Clare match.
How can you claim to be a community organisation when your broadcasting policy is partly inimical to the community base, a policy which is totally elitist.
The motion will be put before Congress at the weekend, and the broadcast rights negotiations for 2017-2019 will begin later this year.
