Category Archives: Sports

GAAandSkySportsLogoApril2014_large

On April’s Fools day 2014, the Gaelic Athletic Association announced a 3-year broadcasting deal with Sky Sports. The deal involved the sale of exclusive rights to a portion of championship games.

The plan didn’t really come together.

Dr Paul Rouse (School of History and Archives, UCD1) is the author of The Impact of Pay TV on Sport

Dr Rouse writes:

Although the GAA hierarchy has sought to portray the deal with Sky as a success and consider the reaction of people in Britain to be ‘a vindication’, the reality is, at best, much more complex – and one might legitimately arrive at entirely the opposite conclusion. After all, what we now know is:

Viewing figures for showcase GAA games in Ireland collapsed; The supposed new service for Irish emigrants in Britain, not only already existed, but did so in a more extensive way; Irish emigrants wishing to watch Gaelic games in Britain must now pay much more than was previously the case; The part of the deal which allowed the broadcast of matches on TV in Australia no longer exists and there is no plan – in any real sense of that word – for internationalisation.

Idris wept.

Read more: Sports Rights Commercialization Revisited: Sky and the GAA (HistoryHub)

Previously: Sly Sports

Thanks Spaghetti Hoop

programmeticket

For the weekend that’s in it.

Saturday, December 31, 1988.

In the year Nelson Mandela is awarded the freedom of the City of Dublin in its millennium year and the Lotto went loive, It was also Italy’s first international appearance at full level against one of the home nations.

Little idea in the line-out, no concerted pattern in the ruck or maul and vulnerable in the extreme around the fringes of the scrum..

And that was just the Irish.

Edmund Van Esbeck wrote:

That was a frustrating exercise. There was absolutely nothing in that match to enrich the memory of the occasion. The manner and lack of quality in the Ireland performance was disturbing. There was very little to admire and basically nothing to encourage.

YIKES!

but we have Joe now.

Screen Shot 2015-02-02 at 01.30.20diving-1

Incredible footage of freediver Guillaume Néry coasting upright through the underwater currents of Tiputa Pass northeast of Tahiti. Filmed late last year by director and underwater camera operator Julie Gautier.

More detail and behind the scenes footage here.

And if you like that, you should really check out Néry’s underwater BASE jump at Dean’s Blue Hole in the Bahamas from 2010.

colossal