Photo agencies are to boycott the rest of the Oasis reunion tour, including the first “homecoming” gig in Manchester on Friday, over restrictions imposed on how newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasters and digital publishers can use pictures from the gigs.
The band’s management has told photo agencies and publishers that they own the rights to shots taken at the concerts for just a year, and then they will lose ownership of the images for any future use.
The industry norm is that such deals for independent photographers from agencies are struck in perpetuity so that publishers can continue to use the shots for pieces such as band retrospectives and tributes, and to illustrate future concerts.
The News Media Coalition (NMC) – which represents national newspaper groups including Guardian News & Media; the Telegraph; the Sun and Times publisher, News UK; and the Mirror and Express owner, Reach – lodged a complaint before the first gig in Cardiff after negotiations failed to sufficiently improve the terms.
The NMC also represents agencies including Thomson Reuters, Associated Press, PA Media, Shutterstock, Getty Images, France’s AFP and Spain’s EFE.
Its chief executive, Andrew Moger, said: “All news publishers, now and back in time, have created news photographs for use on the day and to illustrate future news.
“News agencies want to cover the tour from Cardiff to Brazil, but not having the freedom to share news into the future is a big factor in editorial planning.”
The bodies agreed to the stringent terms for the first two gigs in Cardiff, but have decided to boycott the remaining 39 dates in the UK and overseas after further negotiations with the band’s management failed to improve terms.
It is understood that before the year-long terms were agreed, the initial proposal was for the right to use images for only a month.
The NMC said the “highly unusual” restrictions would hit independent news agencies in the UK and abroad, as well as publishers and broadcasters that use stills to illustrate editorial reports.
Moger said the reunion concerts acknowledge the role publishers have played in the group’s rise, as they begin with a long onscreen sequence of headlines over the years that have “amplified interest in the band”.
“Since the comeback tour was speculated upon and announced, news publishers have reached into their news archives to reproduce imagery which tells the story of the band and its influence since the mid-1990s,” Moger said. “As the band prepares for its UK and overseas legs this is not a time for the band to tell news organisations they want to be invisible.”
The row is the latest to beset the highly anticipated tour, which has brought Noel and Liam Gallagher back together on stage for the first time in 16 years.
Last week, it emerged that the UK competition watchdog had written to Ticketmaster threatening legal action over the way it sold more than 900,000 tickets for the reunion gigs.
In March, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published concerns that Ticketmaster may have misled fans in the way it priced tickets for the band’s comeback gigs when they went on sale last August. Some fans paid more than £350 for tickets with a face value of £150.
The watchdog said Ticketmaster had failed since then to provide any undertakings that it found acceptable to resolve the issue of the way it sold the tickets.
Oasis have been contacted for comment.
