Bid to host Euro 2028 confirmed

savo01 wrote: Seeing the success of the Munster game in Parc Ui Chaoimh last week hopefully some logical thinking could prevail and a new multi purpose stadium be built in Galway for all sport with a 40,000 capacity and PUC be upgraded to a 40,000 all seater so we could host 2 groups and some knock out games.  I live in Armagh, but would love to see Ireland games played in different parts of the country to boost the game going forward.

The idea sounds nice but it would never work sadly.

There's 3 Stadiums based in Galway City right now

Pearse Stadium (26,197) - has rarely ever been filled for a Gaelic Football or Hurling encounter. Absolutely plagued by traffic problems on match day that brings the entire city to a standstill.

Sportsground (8'129) - would sell out fairly regularly, but if the capacity was doubled for arguments sake, then Connacht Rugby would struggle to fill it. Also owned by Irish Greyhound Racing 

Eamonn Deacy Park (5'000) - the best playing surface in the county by a mile, but I can only recall one fixture that came close to the 5'000 capacity (2015 League Cup Final) - Owned by the Galway FA, who are threatening to turn the surface into Astro.

If you got rid of all three and put one 40k stadium in the city with each key stakeholder involved, there'd be no hope of filling it on a regular basis. 

One of the reasons I thoroughly enjoyed the failed Irish bid to host next years Rugby World Cup was because it's "bullet-proof" plan never really addressed the problems we have as a country. It simply just assumed we'll convert GAA stadiums into Rugby stadiums and we'll be grand.

It failed to acknowledge that we have no proper public transport, lack of accommodation outside of Dublin (could only imagine trying to book a hotel in Galway on the weekend of a Group stage encounter), not to mention we arguably rip off tourists to a large degree.

The idea of hosting a tournament sounds a lot better without looking into it in greater detail. MayoMark is 100% right that 135 million would be far better spent in the next 6 years on grasroots football. Even if we invested that much into developing multi-sport all weather facilities across the country, we'd reap the benefits of this much more than 3 weeks of football in 2028 that 1 quarter of which would involve our island.

I dread to think what hotel prices woukd be 

savo01 wrote: You Tell Me wrote: That would cost about half a billion quid, there was never any chance of anything like that happening for this. A decent stadium will have to be built eventually and the price will always go up, so do it now as opposed to when it will cost 1bn!

Spending 135m and getting nothing back would be a bag thing. But if they are talking about a 200m net profit you would hope that most of that money should be used around the country to improve the facilities. 

AnCearrbhach wrote: Where is the 200m profit coming from though? Don't UEFA keep all sponsorship and ticketing money? Maybe that was FIFA though could be wrong. Is it not more of a 200m bonus to the local economy kind of thing. Not sure I'm too delighted for the Dublin hoteliers.

J89 wrote: t_rAndy wrote: AnCearrbhach wrote: Where is the 200m profit coming from though? Don't UEFA keep all sponsorship and ticketing money? Maybe that was FIFA though could be wrong. Is it not more of a 200m bonus to the local economy kind of thing. Not sure I'm too delighted for the Dublin hoteliers.  Net profit to the economy / exchequer so therefore a fund of similar side should b put aside for improving the game in ireland as a legacy ticket  Yeah there's more chance of us winning the bloody thing than that happening. The legacy ticket will be the knees up that those in charge will have celebrating having games from a major tournament played here.

t_rAndy wrote: J89 wrote: t_rAndy wrote: AnCearrbhach wrote: Where is the 200m profit coming from though? Don't UEFA keep all sponsorship and ticketing money? Maybe that was FIFA though could be wrong. Is it not more of a 200m bonus to the local economy kind of thing. Not sure I'm too delighted for the Dublin hoteliers.  Net profit to the economy / exchequer so therefore a fund of similar side should b put aside for improving the game in ireland as a legacy ticket  Yeah there's more chance of us winning the bloody thing than that happening. The legacy ticket will be the knees up that those in charge will have celebrating having games from a major tournament played here. Well I would put that on media and TDs to put pressure to make sure there is a legacy created from the tournament.

Yeah the Euro 2020 bid was supposed to include a new Dalymount which never happened

Out out of the projected spend, how much will be going towards refurb of Croke Park? 

So the legacy for hosting games in the Euros would be the GAA getting a free facelift for their main ground. Lovely