Croke Park Commercial and Stadium Director Peter McKenna has rejected criticism of the GAA's Sky Sports broadcasting deal, insisting that the Association's media rights strategy is working.
Both parties recently signed off on a five-year deal that sees Sky continue to have exclusive rights to 14 championship games each summer until 2021.
UCD historian Paul Rouse and RTE pundit Joe Brolly have criticised the Association's link with Sky in the past.
However, McKenna, who played an instrumental role in bringing in the subscription based broadcaster to cover championship games, feels that the deal has been successful thus far.
"Obviously, I challenge Paul on his approach and his stats on it, I feel that what we set out to achieve, we have more than achieved," McKenna is quoted saying in today's Irish Examiner.
"I think that Sky have brought a new dynamic to it. They were always HD in their broadcasting, now all broadcasters run that.
"I think that they continue to give us a different take and there's a whole series of other marketing activities that Sky do in terms of getting our results out and promoting the game and so on, which is very important to us.
"You have to be very mindful of the fact that we have GAAGO available in 184 countries, so there's a huge appetite from Antarctica right the way through...
"I also think that we probably don't put enough thought to what TG4 are doing and what they have done for the games, which is phenomenal. So, I would (reject Rouse's comments). I wouldn't accept some of the premises that are there. I think the strategy that we laid out for our media rights has worked and is continuing to work."
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