Why all major photo services are boycotting college basketball games managed by The Gazelle Group

On paper, it was the best college basketball game of the year. A top-3 matchup with ESPN’s College Gameday in attendance.

It was competitive, and the ratings were even better, registering as ESPN’s most-watched regular-season college basketball game in seven years.

When the smoke cleared, No. 3 Duke defeated No. 1 Michigan, vaulting them to No. 1 in the country.

When people went looking for coverage of this hugely important game in print and digital editions of their local newspapers and sports websites, an odd pattern played out. The majority of articles on the game did not include photos from it. That’s even true for those from MLive, the website for The Ann Arbor News, The Fayetteville Observer, The Detroit Free Press,  and the local CBS affiliate in Raleigh.

Jon Lewis, owner of Sports Media Watch, first noted the peculiarity of the situation, saying, “Pretty weird to me — doesn’t look like any of the major photo services, at least the ones I’m familiar with, have images from Saturday’s Michigan-Duke game. Nothing as far as I can tell from Getty, Imagn, AP, any of them.”

For those unfamiliar with photo services, websites like ours, as well as countless print and digital outlets, subscribe to these services, which then contract out work to mostly local photographers for newsworthy events.  Awful Announcing currently has a relationship with Imagn but has previously used Getty Images.  These services ensure that almost every major sporting event has at least one photographer on-site, and in some cases multiple photographers, allowing publications a wide assortment of photos to use for stories without having to have a photographer on staff or pay for cross-country travel.

Needless to say, all three wire services not having anyone at the most-watched regular season college basketball game in seven years was EXTREMELY odd. How could that be explained?

The answer lies in the fact that the Duke vs. Michigan game was a neutral-site game managed by The Gazelle Group, a company that, per their website, “represents and consults across sports and entertainment events.” This current basketball season alone, The Gazelle Group has put on over a dozen neutral-site games, including programs like UCLA, Villanova, Marquette, Tennessee, and Indiana, all of whom see this as an ideal opportunity to build their NCAA Tournament resumes.

Because these are neutral-site games, they mostly fall outside their conference television deal. Therefore, the Gazelle Group can sell them directly to TV networks (we are told that the Duke vs. Michigan game was technically not sold to ESPN because Duke was considered the home team and thus it fell within ESPN’s contract with the ACC . With sizable amounts paid to broadcast these games, Gazelle can pay similarly large sums to secure schools’ participation.

If you’re a traditionalist who prefers student sections, full arenas, and true home and away games, you’re going to have to get used to this. ESPN and other networks are reportedly very thirsty for more of these kinds of games, especially after college football and the NFL season are over.

As early as October 2025, social media posts explained that all three wire services had decided to boycott the slate of games run by Gazelle Group and warned other photographers to consider boycotting as well. At the heart of the issue was the following clause in the credentialing application.

“In exchange for my photographer credential being approved, I agree to grant The Gazelle Group, Inc. an irrevocable license, at no cost, to use any and all photos taken at the Event for any purpose whatsoever (other than resale). I shall provide Gazelle with digital access to my photos through a private web site, a public resale web site, or through digital delivery. I also understand that my agreement to these terms does not guarantee the approval of my application.”

The website PetaPixel also covered the credentialing stalemate back in October.

Unsurprisingly, this credential agreement rubbed professional photographers and organizations like NPPA, the New York Press Photographers Association (NYPPA), and ASMP the wrong way. In no uncertain terms, this agreement was a rights grab, as NPPA puts it.

This type of “pay-to-play” arrangement is bad for photographers, and effectively a nonstarter for news organizations like Getty Images, the Associated Press, Imagn, and Icon Sports Wire, all of which have been involved in the discussions with NPAA and The Gazelle Group, NPPA’s General Counsel, Mickey H. Osterreicher, Esq., tells PetaPixel.

The PetaPixel article goes on to say that the Gazelle Group changed the language so that they would be limited to using only three photos per credentialed photographer. The offer was not accepted.

As Osterreicher explains, The Gazelle Group’s demands that photographers provide the company with irrevocable licenses in exchange for credentials is strongly objectionable and hostile toward photographers. It is also, arguably, illegal. Photojournalists, like other members of the press, have constitutional rights to perform protected work, which includes photographing news events. Non-negotiable terms, such as those in The Gazelle Group’s credential agreements, serve to gatekeep access to newsworthy events. This type of arrangement runs afoul of the First Amendment.

Awful Announcing has since been provided with the revised language Gazelle Group put in their credentialing agreement.

Subject to the terms contained herein, credentialed photographers (or their employers, if applicable) retain all rights to their images. In exchange for the approval of a credential to access any Gazelle Group event, each photographer (or employer, if applicable) hereby grants The Gazelle Group, Inc. a non-exclusive license to use, at no cost, up to 3 selected images per event (at Gazelle Group’s discretion) for marketing on its web site and its social media channels. Any such use shall include an appropriate credit to the photographer (or employer, if applicable).

Awful Announcing contacted all three wire services for an update. While none of them provided any comment, the NPPA did offer a response, which we have included in full at the bottom of this article due to its length.

Awful Announcing did speak with Rick Giles, President of The Gazelle Group, about the situation, who, to his credit, was pretty candid about the situation. He ties the new credential process to the Gazelle Group being hit with copyright infringement notices for photos that people at the company “inadvertently used.” Awful Announcing has run into these issues from time to time, and they are a bit of a nuisance, but they can usually be settled without high cost or litigation and can largely be avoided with good photo usage training and practices.

“We are being asked to pay for photos either through legal action or licensing for photos of our own event,” Giles told Awful Announcing. “We don’t want to charge for credentialing or make money off of people’s photos. We just don’t want to invest resources over issues stemming from inadvertent usage.”

I told Giles that, while these enforcement situations are annoying to deal with, as someone who has covered sports media for 15+ years, I had never heard of a photographer boycott like this. He was adamant that they should not have to incur any costs for using photos of their own events.

The gap between how Giles views the situation and that of the General Counsel of NPPA, Mickey H. Osterreicher, could not be any wider, as seen in the statement provided to Awful Announcing.

“If a third-party promoter can use editorial images for marketing and social media promotion without permission or compensation, the practical value of copyright is significantly diminished. Even more concerning, photographs taken for editorial news coverage are generally published without model or property releases. If those same images are later used for marketing or promotional purposes, such commercial use can trigger right-of-publicity and related legal claims, potentially exposing photographers and news organizations to liability.

As a result of these concerns, the major photo services did not apply for credentials under the current language. That was a deliberate decision not to pursue access rather than agree to terms they view as legally and ethically problematic. To date, there has been no meaningful change in Gazelle’s position, and no revised credential language has resolved the core issue. That lack of movement is not surprising; these provisions typically change only when there is sustained scrutiny along with a tangible operational impact on their business model.

In terms of impact, the absence of the major services does not necessarily mean a game goes uncovered. It means coverage is displaced and, in some cases, degraded. One workaround observed at the Tennessee vs. South Carolina game in November was that local outlets appeared to rely on handout images from a school photographer credentialed through the team rather than through Gazelle. That may keep a story alive, but it shifts editorial independence by replacing independent third-party documentation with imagery controlled by a participant in the event.

Those workarounds can also inadvertently reinforce the very behavior the press community is challenging. If Gazelle can obtain and publish the same handout photos for its own marketing purposes, it reduces the incentive to negotiate fair licensing terms with independent journalists and agencies. In effect, the credentialing language pushes the market toward controlled distribution and away from independent reporting.

NPPA has challenged similar rights-grabbing credential provisions in the concert and sports industries before, and those terms were ultimately revised after public scrutiny. Credentialing should facilitate independent coverage, not extract intellectual property concessions, or impose conditions that chill newsgathering. Even when an agreement states that photographers “retain copyright,” requiring uncompensated promotional use as a condition of entry dilutes those rights and creates additional legal risk when editorial images are repurposed for advertising or marketing.

If renewed attention to this issue encourages meaningful dialogue, that would be welcome. NPPA remains willing to engage constructively on credentialing language that respects operational needs while preserving the rights and independence of the working press.”

Next year, Gazelle Group is likely to have an even larger and more high-profile slate of games. Ratings and TV money are undefeated. Barring a change in stance by either group, the wire services and other like-minded photographers will not be there to cover these high-profile games, leaving readers and social media followers without access to photos.

While that would seem problematic for fans and the programs that play in these games, I didn’t get any sense that The Gazelle Group had any urgency or concern about remedying that anytime soon.

“It’s 2026, and the media climate is much different,” said Giles. “These wire services need to catch up to the times.”