Croke Park’s Peter McKenna said he feared a repeat of the chaos that marred the Euro 2020 final at Wembley if there was any compromise on security for a Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano fight.
The bout is now set to take place at the 9,000 capacity 3Arena on May 20 instead of GAA headquarters after promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom said that “the cost of hire and everything involved in the event is three times higher nearly than staging it in Wembley Stadium”.
However, Croke Park stadium director McKenna said that “the costs quoted are far less than we’d normally charge because we would have loved to have had Katie Taylor” and he suggested that Hearn and Matchroom got “a little bit of the jitters” after fearing that the fight wouldn’t clear in excess of 80,000 tickets to fill Croke Park.
READ MORE: Katie Taylor 3Arena headache emerges as Eddie Hearn names date for Dublin homecoming fight
He said: “They have been in conversation with us for some time. The last time we talked to them properly was before Christmas. We would love to have the fight here. We set our stall out on that basis. So our rent was coming in around €400,000. I think the rent for Wembley is about Stg£250,000/300,000.
“The real issue here is about security costs which we felt the promoter should carry and having gone through this with statutory services and our own team, we looked at the risk analysis on the event and we felt that the amount of security that you’d need would be at the top level and that is not inexpensive.
“So I think maybe there’s a worry there they wouldn’t quite get the attendance and also the costs associated with hosting an event at a certain standard that we would be very proud that we would hold to has caused a little bit of jitters.
“But I think listening to all that Eddie was saying this morning, he was talking about a Taylor-Serrano III in September, so I don’t even think that it’s all fully cooked in their own mind.”
McKenna added that “we are not colossally more expensive than Wembley” and pointed to shortcomings that resulted in huge problems at the Euro 2020 final at the venue in July 2021.
“There was carnage there and a public inquiry, Baroness Casey - and I’m a nerd, I read these things in detail - was scathing on the lack of stewards, the police didn’t deploy until too late.
“Police don’t deploy for Croke Park or the Aviva or anywhere else - they’re actually here. You’re not waiting for them to arrive.
“So we, and I think everyone in the event industry based in Ireland, would pride ourselves on the fact that we run very, very safe events and if that costs then that’s a cost that we have to do. The eyes of the world are on us for these type of events and we’re not going to change our position on that.”
Hearn also questioned why the Irish Government hasn’t stepped in to support the event financially though McKenna said that Matchroom needed to “bring something more formal than just a fireside chat”.
“Genuinely I don’t think that’s fair because I went and met with the minister with Matchroom.
“I think they were very, very supportive but they needed something on paper, something that said, ‘Listen, this is what we want and this is why we want it’ and it really wasn’t forthcoming to be honest.
“You can’t really walk in and say, ‘Give us a cheque’. All of us in sport, and particularly during Covid were, kept alive by Government taxpayers’ money but you’ve got to be respectful to the office and bring something more formal than just a fireside chat.
“I’d say the Government did everything that they could and probably their door will still be open but it needs to be done in a far more formal way.”
McKenna added that security costs around the purported event were not driven significantly by the fact that Croke Park is situated close to the heartland where the Hutch-Kinahan feud is playing out. A key event in the feud was the 2016 shooting at the nearby Regency Hotel, where a boxing weigh-in was taking place.
“That would be a very small part of the concern,” McKenna said. “You’re talking about bringing 60-70,000 people into a stadium for a fight that’s late in the evening with quite a bit of alcohol taken.
“They’re the things you should think about, not the fact that it’s in Ballybough. People in Ballybough are fantastic and 400,000 people came for Garth Brooks and there were no issues.
“The point we’re getting across is how event is tagged – not the particular event itself. All of these risks have to be factored in: what time is it on, what’s the crowd profile, what’s the amount of alcohol that’s been taken and all of those give you the criteria you work out before sitting down with the Gardaí and getting their views. It’s not something we just do in isolation.”
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