FAI back away From Premier League Ireland plans

There has been plenty of talk of late of the growing attendances in the League of Ireland game, and there have been further suggestions of how the Football Association of Ireland could tweak the football calendar to further drive fan engagement and continue the overall improvements of the game. Currently, Shamrock Rovers head into every season as favourites in the betting markets.

More recently there had been talk and discussions with potential American backers wherein an idea was floated under the working title of 'Premier League Ireland' that would not only see the Irish led US investment group commit to an initial outlay of 90 million Euros for commercial control, it also aimed to ultimately invite in Northern Ireland Football League clubs to provide a newly packaged tier of the game for both associations.

The plan as explained would have seen member clubs of the new plan share a minimum guaranteed pot of 10 million Euros per year, for the next seven years and the forecasts predicted that across a total of eight years, it would aim to generate 500 million Euros in income.

Former League of Ireland player Kieran Foley is a leading voice in the Visionary Group that was established by former international striker Niall Quinn four years ago, and the reports suggest that it was this group that introduced the idea to the FAI in the past 12 months, after their initial plans and advice regarding the future of Irish football ultimately came to nothing, and separate directions and decisions were eventually taken.

Foley was prominently involved in the establishment of the Caribbean Cricket League, and since then he has been working on his own plan, and he was confident that he had secured financial backing from both a major investment bank, and a separate investment fund - each of which already have good experience in the sporting world, and a global broadcaster had already been approached to handle the packaging of the digital brand in overseas markets.

The overall plan did have different layers. The starting point for establishment was a men's league, but subsequent plans had already been provisionally agreed for a women's game format to eventually be replicated.

The whole plan sounds like a pretty exciting and interesting idea from the outside, but for whatever reason, and these details have not been disclosed in the more recent reports, after discussions had taken place in Dublin with the broker representing the US investors, the FAI began distancing themselves from the project.

Whilst this particular idea may now not move forward, other interested parties will have noted how far the plan as a whole developed, and they could well reintroduce an alternative version of their own in the very near future.

One thing is for sure, there are very likely to be changes to the format of the game in the not too distant future given all of the discussions and ideas that are being bandied around about the future.