Brian Barry
GAA Editor @BrianGBarry
GAA President John Horan defends ticket price increases
Last Updated: 21/01/19 2:43pm
GAA President John Horan has defended the association's decision to raise ticket prices.
The increases, which were decided by the GAA's Central Council on Saturday, have been the subject of much debate in recent days. Among the changes, All-Ireland final stand tickets have risen from €80 to €90, while All-Ireland semi-finals along with football qualifiers will go up by €5.
Horan has defended the move.
"The decision to raise the ticket prices came about because we made a commitment to increase the revenue to club development grants from €2m to €4m over a four-year period," he explained. "It's something I said in my Congress speech that I intended to put the club front and centre.
"That revenue had to be found. We're very tight on our administration costs, and our other grant structures here. The only way we could actually come up with the money was actually raise tickets [prices]. We also promised out international units that we would look at the funding of their boards. If you run a county board in an international unit, you don't get gate receipts at these international games, bar maybe places like New York or Boston.
"We have definite [stadium] redevelopment work to be done in Navan, Newbridge, Waterford and other areas in the next number of years so we had to try and up that fund as well to see what we could do there."
Many have expressed concerns that the increases will significantly hit attendances at matches, and Horan acknowledged the risk.
"In any price increase in any business structure when you look at the prices," he said. "You're talking about our product, our games, that is always a risk that you may suffer an initial drop. But look, the economy is strong at the moment, and we felt, putting all things together, we needed the revenue stream.
"Certainly our games are popular. We felt this was the time. I know we were accused when we changed the structure of the competitions that our changes were purely driven by our greed and our want of money, when in actual fact our finances are going to show that didn't actually happen. In actual fact, we didn't generate the big pool of money.
"You have to be fair," he added. "History will show that we raised it in 2011, we're going up in 2019. When will the next increase come? It may not come for another eight to ten years. In an 18-year time-frame, if you raise your prices once, I think that's reasonable."
