Your First Impressions of Ireland:  For our first blog post in Ireland, let’s focus first on your initial impressions of Dublin from our first day in town.  What caught your attention during this first day in Ireland and in the city?

For the first day in Dublin, I didn’t venture very far into the city. I took a few trips to the local grocery store and walked around the block exploring the neighborhood a few times. However, one thing that did stand out to me in Dublin were the various languages spoken, including the Irish accent in comparison to the English accent. While walking through the neighborhood, I was passed by many different people speaking many different languages. This cultural aspect of Dublin was not something I anticipated going into the trip. At first, I doubted the difference between the Irish accent and the American accent. Being accustomed to hearing more Americanized Irish accents, I was unable to understand the Irish clerk at the grocery store at first. It is interesting to see a slight language barrier develop, even when the same language is spoken.

Croke Park and The Business of Sports: In addition to your first experience with Ireland and Dublin, we need to prepare for tomorrow’s visit to Croke Park Stadium, which has seating capacity for nearly 83,000 fans.  The park is the home of Ireland’s largest sporting and cultural organization, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and each September hosts the GAA All-Ireland Football and Hurling Championship Finals.  The park’s website https://crokepark.ie has several interesting articles on commercial opportunities associated with the stadium, such as corporate sponsorships, along with articles on some of the specific target market segments and even some material on how the park is connected to matters of environmental sustainability.

In preparation for your site visit to Croke Park for a behind-the-scenes tour, think back to our Pittsburgh site visit with Pitt Athletics, and how Pitt Athletics is a multi-million dollar business due to a combination of ticket sales, TV revenue, merchandising and licensing and other revenue streams.  Croke Park likely faces similar types of commercial opportunities and challenges. Based on your quick review of the Croke Park website, identify one commercial opportunity and one commercial challenge.

One huge commercial opportunity is the incorporation of the concerts and special events into the venue. While the GAA league certainly has a viable market segment, the incorporation of these events also includes other market segments of concert-goers and individuals who watch the special events. This also increases the popularity of the GAA among market segments that may not even be aware of the league. One commercial challenge that Croke Park and many other firms face is the issue of sustainability. It is evident that Croke Park is currently making efforts to become more sustainable, however, this doesn’t come without a cost. It is a trend now for large corporations and firms to move towards sustainable projects, which eat into profits, and Croke Park must adjust to meet this trend to appeal to a particular market segment of people who patronize sustainable practices.

A Question For The Site Visit:  Finally, acting as members of consulting teams that might choose to write a group paper about the commercial opportunities and challenges connected to Croke Park, what specific questions do you have about the business model for Croke Park that relates to our course material (Triple Bottom Line and sustainability, market segmentation, maximization versus shared value, etc.)?  Give us a specific question for tomorrow’s visit. 

With your recent efforts to become more sustainable, what impact has this had on the profitability of the stadium and are you currently experimenting with ways to increase profit margins with sustainable implementations?