Sport, at the highest level, is big business. In fact even at the highest amateur level, sport is big business.
Over the course of the past weekend more than 120,000 people packed into Croke Park in Dublin to watch the All-Ireland hurling semi finals.
That’s an incredible figure for an island with a population of just over seven million, and yet we are no longer surprised by that kind of statistic.
Irish people, north and south, are, overall, very enthusiastic sports followers and participants. Gaelic games, football, athletics, boxing…put it on and we will turn up.
This summer, the women’s Republic of Ireland football team will take part in their first ever world cup in Australia, and you can be sure the viewing figures on RTE will be huge.
Then comes the Rugby World Cup where, whisper it, the Ireland team has a realistic chance of actually winning the whole damn thing. Can you imagine the scenes?
Last Friday, I attended a breakfast fundraising event put on by the Down GAA county board. This was in advance of their participation in the Tailteann Cup final which takes place this coming Saturday.
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Speaking to the organisers on the day, they had hoped that around 20 or 30 businesses might take a table of 10 people each, that they would get a decent crowd, stage an entertaining and informative event and make a few pound, which would go towards the cost of running a county team.
In the event they had 660 guests, spread over two rooms in the Canal Court hotel, such was the demand, and it was a terrific morning’s craic and very successful for Down in fundraising terms.
Bear in mind this event was centred around Down making an appearance in the final of the secondary competition when it comes to Gaelic football.
The Tailteann Cup, as it is named, is really in its first proper year (it was staged in 2022 but in a truncated format).
The GAA is not an organisation which is quick to embrace change and the introduction of this competition was debated, voted on, amended and finally adopted as a means of giving the weaker counties a realistic target to aim for instead of the certainty of championship elimination after one or two games.
That there was some anxiety around whether it would be embraced or not, by the participating counties and supporters, seems to have been answered already.
My own county, Antrim, progressed as far as the semi-final. And on that day last month, the Saffron Army took over a little corner of Dublin in a way that has not happened for years.
I was delighted to be there with my own sons and siblings; it’s not unusual for us to be in Croke Park for big All Ireland matches, but here we were, supporting our own county and our own clubmates who were representing Antrim.
On the day of the two Tailteann Cup semi finals, there were 17,500 people in attendance. Far more than was anticipated and when you add that to the numbers attending the Down breakfast, it is safe to conclude that the new competition is a success and is here to stay.
The GAA with its amateur status and massive community buy-in probably sits in the lower or middle end of the ‘sport as a business’ spectrum.
At one extreme we have soccer players, and other sports stars, signing contracts worth unfathomable sums of money; transfer fees of £100m plus are no longer unusual.
It happens in basketball, baseball, motor racing and other sports. One one level it’s obscene, but the reality is we keep watching, we keep buying match tickets, we keep subscribing to the pay for view channels.
The supporters and the commercial partners keep the business of sport going and there is no sign of that changing.
At the other end of the spectrum are the volunteer coaches, administrators and participants who keep communities ticking over week after week, year after year, and this is my favourite group.
I am one of a group of nine who organise a local south Belfast parkrun on a weekly basis. These timed, free 5K runs take place globally and are wholly dependent on the volunteers who marshal the course, time and record the runners, and hand out the finish tokens.
On Wednesday of each week, the phones of our Queen's parkrun group start to ping with messages about the following weekend’s run, making sure we have enough volunteers to accommodate the average 150 runners who turn up every Saturday.
Why do we do it? I am not even sure there is one simple answer, but we love it and we want to make sure the event carries on for the benefit of all who take part.
It’s the same drive that inspires volunteer coaches in all sports up and down the land every week, every season.
While some teams and players exalt in big prizes or big wages, my own parkrun group was delighted to be recently honoured by Queens university for our contribution to community sport. This was our all Ireland, our world cup win. So I will selfishly sign off this article wishing everyone a great sporting summer and shouting out to my parkrun colleagues Fiona, David, Eleanor, Grainne, Kathy, Sandra, Sam, Sheila and Niall. We are some team!
Brendan Mulgrew is managing partner at MW Advocate (www.mwadvocate.com). Follow him on Twitter at @brendanbelfast
