BBC accused of being anti-unionist as GAA broadcast deal follows Twelfth live snub

The All-Ireland senior football and hurling finals will be broadcast live on BBC iPlayer for the first time as part of a new, five-year contract between the GAA and the BBC. Key All-Ireland games will also be broadcast on BBC Two NI in addition to live coverage of matches from the Ulster Championship. Sky Sports had previously had the broadcast rights to the GAA along with RTE. A five-year deal signed in 2015 was estimated to be worth €55 million.

TUV’s Norman Boyd, a longstanding member of the loyal orders, commented: “The BBC decision to secure rights to broadcasting more GAA in the same year in which they binned live coverage of the Twelfth demonstrations speaks of an organisation which is failing in its duty as a public service broadcaster and confirming its anti-unionist bias.

“The BBC is an outlet which cannot tolerate a single hour of live coverage of an expressly unionist and British event. At the time they announced their decision to dump the Twelfth, one of the largest cultural events in Europe, and replace it with reruns of Bargain Hunt and other content of similarly questionable creative merit TUV highlighted that there was no suggestion of coverage of anything related to the nationalist tradition being scaled back. Now we have confirmation that the publicly funded broadcaster is scaling up its coverage of the GAA.”

Mr Boyd said the decision to fund the GAA with licence payers’ money was “scandalous”, drawing attention to the BBC’s limited coverage of the Northern Ireland Centenary parade and its use of a tricolour to represent NI during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.

He said: “This will compound the belief that the BBC is one-sided and incapable of reflecting the reality that the Orange, unionist and protestant community exists in Northern Ireland.”

Responding to the allegation of anti-unionist bias, a BBC spokesperson said: “This latest sport agreement adds to the long-term contracts that BBC Sport NI already has in place for football, rugby and the North-West 200.”