About This Project

The Gaelic Athletic Association

Development of the GAA Data Insights Hub

Client Overview:

The Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), founded in 1884, is Ireland’s largest amateur sporting organization, dedicated to promoting Gaelic games such as hurling, camogie, Gaelic football, handball, and rounders. Beyond sports, the GAA actively supports Irish culture, including music, dance, and language, fostering a strong community identity across its extensive network of over 2,200 clubs throughout Ireland.

Task:

The GAA commissioned People and Place Limited to design and deliver a comprehensive Data Insights Hub. The goal was to create a suite of interactive mapping and dashboard tools to support the Strategy, Insights, and Innovation team. This involved integrating internal data from the Foireann player database with external datasets – including census demographics, future population projections, and schools data – to provide a clear picture of club locations, participation rates, demographic trends, and school linkages across Ireland.

Approach:

We leveraged ESRI ArcGIS Hub to develop a fully interactive GAA Data Insights Hub. The platform enables the Strategy team to:

• Map and visualise GAA, Hurling, Camogie, and Ladies Football clubs nationwide.
• Access dashboards detailing club size and player participation rates.
• Explore demographic forecasts and future population projections across regions.
• Understand the spatial relationship between GAA clubs and nearby primary and secondary schools.

The tools were designed with user experience in mind, ensuring that complex spatial data could be easily interpreted and applied to strategic planning.

Results:

The result is a robust and user-friendly information hub that supports data-driven decision-making within the GAA. It is now an integral resource for strategic planning, used in consultations with demographic officers across the country and to inform discussions on current and future policy direction. The Hub empowers the organisation to plan with greater precision and transparency, grounded in strong evidence.