31 July 2007
ShootLive picture service in a Premier League of its own
Images from every one of the 380 Premier League matches in the new football season will be streamed from pitch side to digital platforms within minutes, thanks to a unique photo service that heralds a new era in sports photography.
Using ShootLive, the very latest in digital technology, photographers from PA Photos will be at every Premier League fixture, taking shots that will ensure fans around the world can view the action, as it happens, through authorised websites.
Not only will all the celebrations and commiserations be captured on camera and available within minutes, the picture feed will be fully compliant with Level Two picture licences from Football DataCo, the official licensing body for the Premier League.
The first game of the season, the Community Shield between Manchester United and Chelsea at the new Wembley Stadium, will be the first match of the Premier League season for ShootLive. The software was successfully tested last week to offer the first shots of David Beckham's debut for LA Galaxy against Chelsea at the Home Depot Center, LA.
ShootLive's Marketing Director, Mark Habgood, commented: "Websites showing real-time images of football matches are the ones that attract visitors. ShootLive has therefore been designed to cut the time it takes for images to get from the camera to the end user's application, such as a website, faster than ever before.
"By automating delivery, ShootLive takes the pain out of editing and selecting photos for use. The pictures are transmitted from the ShootLive system carried by the photographer to PA Photos' operations centre, where an editor selects, edits and captions the best photos.
"The real-time ShootLive picture feed means PA Photos can deliver pictures to customers faster and more efficiently than its competitors, and it's the only service which complies with the strict editorial picture publishing restrictions for the Premier League."
A number of delivery options are available, with pictures being sent directly to an FTP site or an XML feed delivered to an FTP address.
Even more compelling is the option of an image feed into a ShootLive web gallery integrated into a customer's website so that images are streamed within minutes of the shots being taken, ensuring an unbroken feed of all of the action. See it in action here using your PA Photos log in details.
For the next best thing to being at the match itself, ShootLive's image feed can also be packaged with further real-time data, statistics and commentary as part of PA Sport's Match centre.