Take money out of it. Ignore the need to drive stream­ing sub­scrip­tions for a second. For­get about try­ing to serve one media rights part­ner above another.

Just look at the slate of GAA fix­tures this week­end and ask: what would be the best way to pro­mote the games?

Kerry versus Donegal in Kil­lar­ney in round one of the All-Ire­land series is the box-office game that jumps off the page. From the moment two of the favour­ites for the Sam Maguire Cup were paired, there could be no dis­put­ing the biggest tie of the draw.

The same pair­ing attrac­ted a peak of just over one mil­lion view­ers on RTÉ for last July’s All-Ire­land final.

If the GAA wants to max­im­ise pro­mo­tion, max­im­ise audi­ence reach, then it’s a no-brainer — that’s the main RTÉ fix­ture tomor­row, throw­ing in at 3pm. Cork-Meath (5.30pm at Páirc Uí Rinn) and Gal­way-Kil­dare (7.30pm at Pearse Sta­dium) look per­fectly tailored for the GAA’s own live stream­ing ser­vice GAA+.

On Sunday, the cham­pi­on­ship hurl­ing fix­ture with the most rid­ing on it is Dub­lin-Kilkenny with the pos­sib­il­ity of a Dub­lin win knock­ing Kilkenny out of the cham­pi­on­ship. Let RTÉ have that as planned. Time for Lein­ster hurl­ing to have the stage after Mun­ster has dom­in­ated the live sched­ules.

But let TG4 take Cork-Clare at Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Why is it that a sta­tion that does such ser­vice to Gaelic games the year round is frozen out for the All-Ire­land senior cham­pi­on­ships? The Irish lan­guage and its flag­ship sta­tion deserves to be attached to the GAA’s main cham­pi­on­ship.

The exist­ing media rights deal which runs up until 2027, should have been fluid and flex­ible to accom­mod­ate a sport­ing arm that in Gaelic games, is often a gold stand­ard. BBC too have been a hugely worth­while addi­tion as a media part­ner.

GAA+ is down to screen the clash between newly crowned Con­nacht foot­ball cham­pi­ons Roscom­mon and Ulster side Tyr­one. Again, if you want to max­im­ise pro­mo­tion and reach, let the BBC run with that one. In this case, the hurl­ing and foot­ball games being broad­cast on two ter­restrial plat­forms sim­ul­tan­eously at 2pm would, to a large extent, have their own dis­tinct view­er­ship.

GAA+ has Kil­dare-Offaly (New­bridge 2pm), another key game in the Lein­ster hurl­ing cham­pi­on­ship, as well as show­cas­ing Fer­man­agh against Wex­ford in the Tail­teann Cup at 1pm.

To me, that’s a media rights pack­age for a single week­end that would do far more for the pro­mo­tion of Gaelic games. But, as we all know, that isn’t the case.

Kerry versus Donegal is behind a pay­wall in the shape of GAA+. It’s a cal­cu­lated move to drive sub­scrip­tions for the stream­ing ser­vice which has decoupled from RTÉ and inves­ted heav­ily in its own stu­dio, expan­ded staff and fleet of ana­lysts. But if GAA+ isn’t going to be a pos­it­ive pro­mo­tional vehicle for Gaelic games, then what is the point?

This column has long been an advoc­ate, in prin­ciple, for GAA+ and the stra­tegic sense in the asso­ci­ation devel­op­ing its own in-house media part­ner.

This is the age of stream­ing, whether every sup­porter likes that or not. The GAA has to have a foothold in that space.

‘Future-proof­ing’ is how Noel Quinn, Head of GAA+, put it. In so many ways, the GAA+ expan­sion and invest­ment makes sense.

Which makes the policy of cherry-pick­ing some of the best games and hid­ing them behind a pay­wall — and that’s the unvar­nished truth of any sports fix­ture that isn’t avail­able free-to-air — so hard to under­stand.

There is so much right about the model in the­ory and yet so much wrong about the fix­ture choice. Because ostra­cising fans is self-defeat­ing. Lim­it­ing the pro­mo­tion of key games is self-defeat­ing.

Listen to your audi­ence. Water­ford hurl­ing great John Mul­lane has decried how the small ball game — and the pro­mo­tion of his own county — has been side­lined by an approach that he said amounts to ‘hid­ing the jew­els in the crown’ adding: ‘The future of the GAA is head­ing in a dan­ger­ous dir­ec­tion, and it is all based off greed, pure and utter greed’, cit­ing the lack of ter­restrial cov­er­age for Water­ford’s Mun­ster cham­pi­on­ship games against Cork and Lim­er­ick.

Cork’s three-time All-Ire­land Donal Óg Cus­ack, a hurl­ing ana­lyst on RTÉ, spoke for many when he said: ‘Someone in Croke Park and someone in Mon­trose… thought it was a good idea to make a small amount of profit next year, or a per­ceived profit in the future, on the back of hurl­ing and it does noth­ing for the game.

‘The Gov­ern­ment should come into this and take a ser­i­ous look because I believe both insti­tu­tions are not doing their duty in this case.’

IN the case of GAA+, the very name sug­gests a pos­it­ive. It’s raison d’etre surely is to act as a pos­it­ive addi­tion to the media land­scape.

But by delib­er­ately pay­walling key games — RTÉ for example put in for Tip­per­ary-Clare in Mun­ster last Sat­urday and Kerry-Donegal this week­end only to be knocked back — it’s work­ing in reverse. Almost as a minus.

And ‘GAA-‘ is not how you want to be thought of in the minds of sup­port­ers. It really is a simple fix. The GAA’s next media rights deal has to be more fluid, and allow a mix of ter­restrial broad­casters, includ­ing TG4. Why not?

Their cov­er­age of the U20 Mun­ster hurl­ing final last week for example drew in more than 100,000, with 228,700 view­ers tun­ing in live across five under­age GAA games shown free-to-air across TG4 plat­forms.

Just let GAA+ work around the biggest games and sup­ple­ment the cov­er­age in the qual­ity way it has been doing. Be a pos­it­ive addi­tion.

The mid-week shows on the plat­form are a dis­tinct addi­tion. The pro­vin­cial foot­ball final pre­view show gen­er­ated 29k views. There was a total of 61k views for the live round one draw for the All-Ire­land foot­ball cham­pi­on­ship – exactly what the plat­form is suited for.

The timeline for integ­ra­tion with the Cam­o­gie Asso­ci­ation and Ladies Gaelic Foot­ball Asso­ci­ation is 2027 and the GAA need to be think­ing of a fluid, more encom­passing media rights deal that cov­ers the fam­ily of Gaelic games. GAA+ is per­fectly suited for that space where the menu of games will only be expand­ing.

In July 2024, Gaelic foot­ball and ladies Gaelic foot­ball gained formal State recog­ni­tion as part of Ire­land’s ‘Liv­ing Cul­tural Her­it­age.’ That was after hurl­ing and cam­o­gie were added to Unesco’s list of ‘Intan­gible Cul­tural Her­it­age’ back in 2018, to be pro­tec­ted and safe­guarded.

Then GAA pres­id­ent John Horan greeted that with: ‘All of us involved in the asso­ci­ation are charged with ensur­ing that the pro­mo­tional work we under­take pre­serves hurl­ing for future gen­er­a­tions.’ Same goes for foot­ball. There was no men­tion try­ing to coin a few extra sub­scrip­tions.

It’s a simple fix, to use GAA+ to sup­ple­ment a media rights model that is under­pinned by free-to-air ter­restrial tele­vi­sion cov­er­age. It’s not too late to change tack.