In reality i do realise that images help to publicise the club – of course you are correct.

What i somewhat disagree with is that you infer that Southampton have created a stumbling block for publishers to get the photos needed to produce an article on time.

The timescales would be no different going through our agent as it would through the many other agencies that papers deal with every day.

The difference? No kickback.

I don’t think Saints will be the only club to do this – if all clubs did it then more money would stay in the game rather than leaking into the press. That’s why the sun are up in arms.

Still, if publicity is where value is em, then it seems we’re getting rather a lot right now! Whether it be under our pseudonym or not

photographs certainly are a priority, clubs want pieces about them to be visible and prominent on newspaper pages and websites. it’s in the best interest of the club to have photos immediately accessible to media agencies, in order to achieve timely publishing of articles. if a paper or site has to go through the process of purchasing the rights before they can use anything, it’s going to hinder the club’s potential appearances in the publications. especially with a lower-division club like southampton, photos are important because television airtime is not as widespread.

as for sponsors, southampton isn’t exempt from needing sponsors–you may not have a shirt sponsor, but you have on field advertising, umbro kits, etc. in fact, southampton has a somewhat unusually large number of sponsors, considering your players’ kits are each individually sponsored. these sponsors depend on the visibility of the players and value their contribution on how much publicity they’re getting.

so all in all you may get a bit of income out of it, but it could certainly come back to bite you when the sponsors who are paying up for visibility realise the club is actively limiting it.

http://www.comboutique.com/shop/homeboutique-41003.html

Photographs are a priority?? I thought TV was rather more important hence why we sell footage of our games to Sky & BBC etc.

As for sponsors – you may not have seen (as no papers have kindly bought one of Southampton’s excellent own pictures) but Southampton do not need a sponsor and are celebrating their 125th anniversary by not having one.

Interestingly license payers – the BBC have bought the first of our pictures. Let the money roll in….

As for the Sun… f**k em. It’s a right wing rag and the hypocrisy of a tabloid that will stoop to any level to get a story and ruin peoples lives is laughable.

Well done Saints, the only club with any guts to stand up to the scumbags in the media.