The Football League and BBC Sport have agreed a deal to create a joint archive and have appointed BBC Motion Gallery, BBC Worldwide’s clip licensing business, to digitise the content and license the rights.
The deal, which runs until 2016, is the first of its kind in the UK where a sporting organisation and broadcaster have created a joint archive. As part of the agreement, BBC Motion Gallery has brought together two partners. Thought Equity Motion will digitise the Football League’s content and license clips in North and South America, Asia and Australasia, while North One Television will produce finished programming from the archive.
Paul Maidment, Director of BBC Motion Gallery at BBC Worldwide commented on the deal, saying, “We’re delighted to be working with The Football League and BBC Sport. Having Thought Equity Motion and North One Television on board were important factors in helping us agree what is a great opportunity to open up footballing archives. We hope this is the first of many similar deals over the next few years.”
The archive dates back to the 1950s and features iconic moments from the League Cup and priceless footage of vintage teams from the past sixty years, including the great Leeds United sides of the seventies, Liverpool’s European Cup winners of the eighties through to Manchester United and Arsenal’s double-winning teams of the nineties and noughties.
