Galway GAA chiefs braced for €1m shortfall due to Covid-19
Galway County Board will lose out on €1m in income over the coming weeks, according to treasurer Mike Burke.
GAA director general Tom Ryan said last Friday that the association is facing losses of up to €60m due to the Covid-19 sporting shutdown, and while the financial hit to county boards will be on a much smaller scale, they are not immune from feeling the full force of mass GAA inactivity at present.
Galway took in more than any other county in club gate receipts last year, but their 2020 total, Burke has predicted, could fall to half the 2019 figure of €977k.
The opening two rounds of the Galway hurling championship scheduled for April have been postponed and it is widely accepted that their 10-round senior championship will have to be considerably condensed if it is to be run off and completed at the back end of 2020. Less games, of course, will mean far less takings at the gate.
The postponement of the county’s Connacht SFC fixture away to New York on Sunday, May 3, was the second substantial hit to Galway coffers since Covid-19 brought this country to a standstill. The “large fundraiser” the county board had organised in New York on the weekend of the game will not now take place.
“For a county like Galway, you’d be talking about losing an income of around €1m,” said Burke of the GAA shutdown and the likelihood it will extend to May, at the very least.
“We had a lot planned this year in terms of fundraising. Most of it is out the window now. Of course, I say this fully cognisant of the bigger picture and that all decisions taken regarding the cessation of GAA activity were correct.”
Galway county board had set itself a fundraising target for 2020 of half a million euro after the collapse of their fundraising income last year, falling from €860k, in 2018, to €144k in 2019. This sharp decline contributed to an end-of-year account deficit totalling €261k.
The Galway treasurer continued: “You’ll have to cut back on expenditure as you simply cannot spend money you do not have. Gate receipts in Galway are massive, but we could easily end up losing 50% of our gate receipts.”
Tipperary are another county looking to bring their accounts out of the red after running up a deficit of €371k last year. Premier treasurer Michael Power said the hope for 2020 is to “break even, and then wait for the better days to address whatever you have to address”.
No county spent as much as Tipperary did on their inter-county teams last season, their €1.77m total a 54% jump on the previous year’s spend.
“Team expenses should come down substantially as a result of this lockdown,” added Power.
