Live streaming of club action is on the agenda for Galway
WITH restrictions expected to be placed on numbers allowed to attend club championship matches, Galway GAA is planning to stream hurling and football club games into the homes of supporters across the county.
At Tuesday evening’s Hurling Committee meeting in Ballinderreen, at which the new formats for the 2020 club championships were discussed, club delegates were informed of the progressive initiative.
“So, this week, we are talking with providers,” said Hurling Committee Chairman Paul Bellew. “It is not just a hurling initiative, though, it’s a county initiative, and the technical competency is the one thing we are focusing on because one option is to use it behind the paywall. And if we use it behind the pay-wall, it has to be of a high technical standard.
“So, we can’t have any issues of coverage dropping and that is what we are sorting through at the moment. I’d say it will be another two weeks before we have any definitive update on the provider we’ll go with and, then, we have to make decisions if we will put it behind the paywall or not.”
Another decision that will have to be made is the number of live games Galway GAA stream. “It will,” agreed Bellew. “Once we pick the technical providers, it will come down to the Hurling and Football Committees to decide the volume of games they each want to show. I actually had this on the agenda back in January – before Covid – to trial it in August.
“We were never going to get it done, though, before the April games but we had conversations. So, this is not just a reaction to Covid; I had it in my head to look at it at one of the August group games while being mindful that it didn’t impact on crowds. Obviously, there are different circumstances now.”
Meanwhile, as was expected, the 24-team Galway senior hurling championship has been reformatted into three groups of four teams in Senior ‘A’ and ‘B’, with last year’s county finalists St. Thomas’ and Liam Mellows to be kept apart in the group stages when the draws are made on the week of June 29.
All four of the 2019 semi-finalists – Cappataggle and Turloughmore are the other clubs – will be seeded and not more than two of these can be drawn together in the one group.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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