Cork’s ‘crusade’ to win the Liam MacCarthy Cup, and the huge support enjoyed by Pat Ryan’s team, helped the GAA to report bumper gate receipts for 2025.
The GAA’s annual accounts recorded a figure of €45.7m for gate receipts last season, up €6.6m, or 17 percent, from 2024.
GAA finance director Ger Mulryan said a combination of factors contributed to the extra take at the gates, from a ticket price increase to fresh interest in the football championship as a result of the new rules.
But he acknowledged that Cork’s huge hurling support, which generated a series of sellout encounters last summer as they reached the All-Ireland final, played a part in swelling gate receipt figures.
“I think you’d have to give credit to Cork’s fan base and supporters throughout the League last year,” said Mulryan, referencing the Division 1 winners.
“They drove significant attendances. In fairness to Dublin, Dublin got to the All-Ireland hurling semi-final and that was a sell out. But I think probably if Cork played anyone in the semi-final, it would have been a sellout as well.
“Again, that was up on the previous year where the two hurling semi-finals had traditionally been between 50,000 and 60,000. So to go to a sellout last year was a testament to Cork’s crusade that they’re on to win a Liam MacCarthy.”
The move to a new football Championship structure this year, taking eight games out of the competition compared to 2025, has the potential to affect gate receipts in 2026.
Mulryan said his hope is that with increased jeopardy under the new format, more supporters will attend individual games, potentially balancing the books.
“While collectively we’re eight (games) short in the senior championship, and eight short in the Tailteann Cup, that in pure financial terms is about a million euros of a decrease,” said Mulryan.
“But the expectation is that we will pick the vast majority of that up hopefully through increased attendance.”
Mulryan said that while the GAA’s overall consolidated surplus for 2025 was €3.7m, a significant decrease on the €6.3m of 2024, this drop was ‘forecast’ and ‘managed’.
He reiterated the claim of GAA Director General Tom Ryan, himself a former finance director, that the set of accounts amounted to ‘a universally positive year’.
Croke Park remains the jewel in the GAA’s crown and the company that runs the stadium reported revenue of €50.5m for 2025, up 10 percent on the previous 12 months.
But commercial income and state funding were both slightly down while match day costs rose to €18.2m for the games covered by Central Council.
With 83 cent of each euro generated by the Association being reinvested, this contributed to paying for 375 full-time coaches along with €9.4m being spent on player welfare and €19.9m on team grants and distributions to counties and players.
The 33 county boards, including London, reported a combined surplus of €6.5m in 2025, up from €3.7m. Out of those county boards, 23 recorded surpluses with 10 reporting deficits.
Writing in his annual report, Director General Ryan suggested that county boards set aside ‘an agreed percentage of their annual income… for the purposes of maintenance of county grounds’. He said that this would greatly assist ‘with the significant capital outlay attached to facility redevelopment’.
He claimed that it would help ‘impose a degree of discipline on us in an environment where immediate senior county team spend and success would otherwise be the main priority’.
