Clubber TV has taken the changing landscape of the broadcasting world by storm!

In recent times a new phrase has crept into the conversation in Tipperary, ‘I saw it on Clubber...’

It crops up in hurling conversations when people talk about penalties by Eoin Kelly or saves by Rhys Shelly.

The thrills and spills of the penalty shootout between Kilsheelan Kilcash and Upperchurch Drombane as well as John McGraths 1-13 for Loughmore against Roscrea or Darragh Woods wonder point for Holycross against Kiladangan were all captured - for all time - because the games were live streamed by Clubber.

In contrast to the negativity surrounding GAA GO and the broadcasting of intercounty games, the vibe has been positive surrounding the broadcasting of club games. At the heart of the sport, people want to spread the word and now the platform is there to do that.

Earlier this year Clubber signed a three-year deal with Tipperary GAA and, as well as driving on the business, they hope to build a wide audience for club games and spread the word far and wide that the Tipperary championships are full of drama and skill.

The CEO and co-founder of the fast growing Clubber TV hails from Tipperary. Jimmy Doyle grew up outside Thurles and, like so many in the county, was sports mad. He hurled with Moyne Templetuohy and spent his formative years in Thurles CBS where he worked on the skills of the game before he went to another famed hurling nursery:

“I repeated my Leaving Cert in St. Kieran's College in Kilkenny. That was an eye opener from a hurling point of view to be honest with you.

“When I was in Kilkenny I had the beauty of playing hurling with the likes of Pat O'Neill, DJ Carey, PJ Delaney, Andy Comerford, Canice Brennan and Philly Larkin.

“At the time I didn't realise who these guys were, they were ordinary lads playing in school. Every last one of them went on to win multiple All-Ireland medals. That was an amazing experience to play alongside those guys in those days.

“I hurled with my club Moyne and moved to Dublin in my early 20s but I stayed playing away with Moyne into my early 30s I suppose. It was great. I have great friends from it. It is a great bond you will have for all your years really.”

Jimmy Doyle has seen his company grow in recent years, and he explains the background to the company: “I was working in Microsoft for many years and the opportunity came up for me to think about other things as Streaming became a reality during Covid.

“My passions were in sport, fundamentally in GAA and I realised I might never get a better chance to try something. I always had the itch to try something myself and took a chance. That was the beginning of it. It was three years ago, coming up on four now,” he says.

With his experience at Microsoft, Jimmy had the technical expertise, so he turned his work towards his love of gaelic games:
“My background is building global software products at Microsoft for over 20 years and in that time I learned a lot.

“In Microsoft, the actual business was Media business so I would have worked with a lot of the large scale media organisations around the world such as BBC, Sky and The New York Times.

“All of these are partners of Microsoft so I had some knowledge of media as well as technology. Both of these merged together,” says Jimmy.

From there, Clubber was born and it has grown since then. It has become a serious player on the GAA landscape and each weekend throughout the year a huge amount of games are broadcast live. Added to that are darts, boxing, snooker, cricket, MMA and many other sports.

The array of sporting fixtures on any given Sunday means the viewer has a pick of games or indeed sports to watch. The range and choice is a huge appeal for many who simply soak up the games on offer. The viewer is the winner because of the variety of choice.

Like all new technologies evolving, things change constantly and Jimmy is at the coalface of this business: “It has been a long learning curve for me throughout that time frame. There is nothing simple about it.

“We had ups and downs in the early stages of trying to get the product right and trying to get the business model right as well as trying to understand what fans wanted.

“There was a wide variety of things that we were trying to get our head around and build our product in parallel, scale it and really handle peak loads coming for games that you have at the one time. That was a learning curve for us.

“In the last two years it really started to take shape more and more. Now we have a really robust system in place. We see ourselves as a broadcaster fundamentally.

“Our job is to see how we can get as many games as possible onto the system without losing on them. We are trying to grow the market place and give fans what they want.

“Since we opened up the subscription model of ‘all you can eat’ for the year, fans are going crazy for it. It is clear that is what people want.

“It is like a TV channel now where people pay for their subscription for the year and they can watch whatever they want,” the former Moyne Templetuohy hurler says.

As it stands Clubber TV now broadcasts games every weekend from many different counties such as Tipperary, Kerry and Kilkenny where many big name players such as Noel McGrath, David Clifford and TJ Reid can be seen in action.

Some might fear that streaming services will result in lower attendences at matches but the opposite appears to be the case with huge interest both online and in terms of clicks going through the turnstiles.

Different people may get different things from Clubber. The coach may watch to see patterns of play and garner statistics such as the number of puckouts won. The player may watch to see how a direct opponent turns or strikes the ball. Of course they will analyse their own game too.

Someone away from home will look to stay in touch and keep their finger on the pulse. The club member will of course watch their own games and watch to see how their neighbouring parish got on too. That is just a few examples, many will log on to the action from other counties as well as staying tuned in to their own.

In Tipperary the range of games available is broad. The Tipperary Senior hurling championship games are broadcast with full live commentary, as well as games from the Premier Intermediate and Intermediate championship.

Under 19 hurling championship games have been broadcast live too, as well as matches from the Senior and Intermediate football championships in Tipperary.

The same mix is across other counties as well. Clubber offers subscribers the choice of up to 40 games to watch on any given weekend from across the country, either live or to watch back after the game.

When streaming became a thing, some counties had their fixtures behind a paywall but now the reality has changed.
By accessing Clubber, supporters in one county can watch the action in another county once they have paid for the season pass.
It has become the norm. The plan is for Clubber to grow and push on in the marketplace. There is room for growth in the sector, says the Tipperary entrepreneur:

“Totally. In the end, the ambition is for us to be in a place where people can browse and watch as many GAA games as you want from around the country. We are very open to talking to County Boards who would like their games showcased on Clubber,” he says.

The games are now available worldwide and can be showcased in many countries where they can be accessed by whoever would like to watch. The main audience though is local, according to Jimmy:

“You will always get sporadic numbers, typically people that are gone on holidays. But I think anyone who is an ExPat now, there is a bit more investment needed on companies like us and the GAA itself to try and wrap your arms around those people that have lived abroad for a number of years to bring them back into their local clubs.

“Like, if you're gone for five or ten years or more, you have lost touch with who the players are. You can drift away from it really. I think there is a job of work to be done to re-embrace those people to get them back excited about it,” he says.

As Clubber expands into other counties, and other countries, the hope is that it will take the broadcasting of the games to a new level. This also creates opportunities for local production companies in multiple places:

“We try to use local production companies and local commentators within counties. We’d like people to embrace us as we enter a county and don't feel like it is someone coming in and taking over,” the Clubber TV CEO says.

A new era in broadcasting has added greatly to the sporting landscape and has offered a lot of benefits to followers of the club game. The thrills and the spills of the championship are beamed into homes across Tipperary, and manys the Sunday has been spent watching the GAA championships unfold.

As the season rolls on, the buzz can be found at the touch of a button. Rather than going to the game, the game comes to you. In some ways, it has revolutionised broadcasting.

The game across Ireland is now opened up to a new audience. Pat Spillane made reference recently to having to choose between watching a Champions League soccer match or a GAA championship match in County Louth and he picked the gaelic football game.

This new platform has opened up new avenues for Irish sport. The change in culture and growth in streaming was accelerated since Covid struck in 2020.

As the market changed, supporters have broadly welcomed the exposure the club game is now getting whereas previously games didn’t get the attention from traditional TV.

It means that the viewer has the power to decide what hurling or football game they want to watch on a particular night. They have a choice of multiple games now which was previously unavailable on any platform.

New avenues to watch sport are now available like never before according to Jimmy Doyle: “We see people in Louth now watching Kerry football and vice versa. The Tipperary audience will watch hurling and football from other counties because you can.

“The Tipperary public are fanatical about Tipperary GAA and obviously Tipperary games first and foremost, but given the opportunity to watch other games, there is a large proportion of people who will sit down and watch another game if they can,” he says.

Many of the counties surrounding Tipperary are part of the season pass so the appeal is there to log on and watch Ballyhale, Tullaroan, Rathdowney, Portlaoise and Ballygunner amongst others in action from one weekend to the next.

Tipperary, Louth, Kerry, Laois, Waterford and Longford GAA games are being streamed this season by Clubber TV. In recent weeks Clubber also secured the rights to show Kilkenny GAA games. It is another great addition which Jimmy Doyle says ultimately benefits the viewer:

“A lot of the players playing for these clubs are household names. I’m looking at Kilkenny, over the last number of years and we have become accustomed to knowing who these guys are so we are excited about it.

“It brings that extra value again for the Tipp fans who have paid the subscription. The Tipp championship might be getting to the latter stages, but Kilkenny is only winding up now.”

Rather than resting on their laurels, Clubber continues to expand the product and upgrade with the latest technology: “Other things we are working on into the future is some AI in the background that we have had bubbling for a number of years.

“The beauty of that is that we can start summarising games and you get the option to watch a game in a five minute snippet. We think that is going to be a really interesting project hopefully coming in 2024 for people.”