GAA Director general Paraic Duffy says that there has been no huge windfall to the association from Sky Sports coming on board as one of the championships broadcasters.

This afternoon it was confirmed that Sky had acquired the rights to 14 exclusive championship games for each of the next three seasons, with RTE retaining the rights to 31 games which will be shown free to air in Ireland.

There were suggestions that with subscription channel Sky Sports edging out TV3 as one of the GAA's broadcast partners, there would be a noticeable increase in income for the association from their television partners.

However, Duffy has said that there will not be a huge difference in the revenue the GAA receives from the new deal.

"The financial benefit to the GAA from the new broadcast contracts compared to the previous ones is marginal," explained Duffy. "Financial considerations were far from being the guiding criterion in our negotiations, and were of lesser importance than the issue of making our games more widely available to Irish people living abroad."

Sky Sports will now broadcast their 14 games throughout Ireland and Britain, and it was this reach into the UK which led the GAA to go with Sky.

"In the negotiation of these rights, the GAA was guided by a wish to drive the promotion of Gaelic games and we believe the new rights' contracts will provide Gaelic games with their widest-ever global audience reach." Tweet

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