A Northern Irish political party, Traditional Unionist Voice (or TUV), has expressed its belief that the BBC increasing its coverage of GAA is a clear example of an 'anti-unionist bias' present within the British broadcaster.
As part of a new five-year media rights deal announced on Tuesday, the BBC will not only continue its coverage of the Ulster Senior Football Championship but will also showcase the All-Ireland semi-finals and finals across hurling as well as football.
The two showpiece deciders will both also be made available across the BBC's global network, opening it up to a potentially massive audience - albeit it will be competing against the likes of the women's World Cup for the sporting spotlight next July.
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But while this ongoing commitment to broadcasting the Ulster Championship as well as the latter stages of the All-Ireland series was a crumb of comfort to fans in Ulster and beyond in the wake of Sky Sports departing the market, the Traditional Unionist Voice have come out strongly in condemning it for 'failing in its duty as a public service broadcaster.'
They contrast this increase in coverage with the BBC's decision not to televise this year's Orange Order marches which provoked much anger in some quarters.
In a TUV party statement, former MLA Norman Boyd blasted: "The BBC decision to secure rights to broadcasting more GAA in the same year in which they binned live coverage of the Twelfth demonstrations speaks of an organisation which is failing in its duty as a public service broadcaster and confirming its anti-unionist bias.
"The BBC is an outlet which cannot tolerate a single hour of live coverage of an expressly unionist and British event.
"At the time they announced their decision to dump the Twelfth, one of the largest cultural events in Europe, and replace it with reruns of Bargain Hunt and other content of similarly questionable creative merit TUV highlighted that there was no suggestion of coverage of anything related to the nationalist tradition being scaled back.
"Now we have confirmation that the publicly funded broadcaster is scaling up its coverage of the GAA.
"This will compound the belief that the BBC is one-sided and incapable of reflecting the reality that the Orange, unionist and protestant community exists in Northern Ireland."
The BBC did issue a brief statement in response.
It said: "This latest sport agreement adds to the long-term contracts that BBC Sport NI already has in place for football, rugby and the North-West 200."
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