Sheer folly as Galway GAA gets just €76,000 from Ed’s gigs

THE Galway County GAA Board look set to review their stance on the holding of future ‘superstar concerts’ in Pearse Stadium after it emerged this week that they only benefitted to the tune of €76,000 from last May’s two Ed Sheeran concerts.

Delegates heard at last Monday night’s County Board meeting in Loughgeorge that the two Ed Sheeran sell-out concerts at Pearse Stadium on May 12/13 last only netted Galway GAA a very modest profit of €76,000.

That figure could be adjusted to just above €100,000 if the cost of installing a CCTV camera system was taken into account, costing in the region of €30,000. This is now a permanent additional facility at the venue.

It emerged at last Monday night’s County Board meeting in Loughgeorge that while it had been a solid year on the fundraising front for Galway GAA – with a total of €640,000 raised – the return from the concerts was, according to GAA sources, ‘very disappointing’.

On the week before the Pearse Stadium concerts, Ed Sheeran played at Cork’s Páirc Uí Chaoimh on three dates – May 4, 5 and 6 – attracting 120,000 people to the recently revamped Cork GAA stadium.

According to reports in The Examiner newspaper after the Cork gigs, the Cork County Board were set to benefit to the tune of over €1 million from the Páirc Uí Chaoimh concerts.

Páirc Uí Chaoimh’s Stadium Operations Manager, Bob Ryan, told that paper in the aftermath of the gigs, that the revenue generated from the concerts would be ploughed back into the promotion of GAA in Cork and in paying off the debt associated with the development of the stadium.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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