Action Images

About Action Images

Action Images was a London-based sports photography agency founded by the sports photographer David Jacobs, which grew into one of the strongest independent sports picture agencies of the 1990s and 2000s. It combined an editorial and commercial photography business with an archive of more than seven million sports images spanning over fifty years. In September 2005 the agency was acquired by the Reuters news organisation, which operated it as a separate arm of its pictures business. The standalone Action Images brand and website were later retired — Reuters launched a new site for the brand in 2018 and dropped it in 2021, redirecting the address to its main pictures hub — and the operation now survives within Reuters' sports photography offering. Its former official website was actionimages.com.

Founding by David Jacobs

Action Images was founded by David Jacobs, a sports photographer who built the agency into a significant independent player in sports picture supply. The agency's business had two sides: a working editorial operation covering live sport for newspapers, magazines and other media clients, and a commercial arm selling sports imagery for advertising, sponsorship and corporate use. Underpinning both was the archive — more than seven million sports photographs, with over 1.5 million available online — dating back more than half a century and covering football, rugby, cricket, tennis, athletics, motorsport and the Olympic Games. The agency sold its pictures to media clients in its core markets of the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, and positioned itself as a specialist alternative to the larger generalist agencies.

Coverage and Clientele

As an independent agency, Action Images built its reputation on fast, comprehensive sports coverage. Its photographers covered the full calendar of British and international sport — Premier League and international football, Test and county cricket, rugby union and league, tennis, golf, athletics and motorsport — supplying pictures to national newspapers within minutes of the final whistle. The agency's client base extended across its core markets of the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, serving newspapers, magazines, book publishers and broadcasters. Its commercial division licensed images to sponsors, sporting bodies and advertisers, monetising both new photography and the deep historic archive. This dual editorial-commercial model, unusual among smaller agencies, made the business an attractive acquisition target and underpinned the premium Reuters was prepared to pay.

The Reuters Acquisition

In September 2005 Reuters announced that it had acquired Image Group Limited, the holding company of the Action Images group, in what the Guardian's Dan Milmo described as a multimillion-pound agreement. The gross assets of Image Group Limited as of 30 December 2004 amounted to £1,821,494. The deal was understood to have been carried out at a significant multiple of Action Images' reported revenues, which stood at around US$4.51 million in the preceding year. Action Images retained its name and continued to operate as a separate arm of Reuters, allowing the group to sell its editorial content to commercial clients. Founder David Jacobs remained as managing director, Philip Kelly became chief executive, and Monique Villa, Reuters' global head of news, became chair.

Strategic Rationale

Reuters framed the acquisition as an important part of the ongoing investment and expansion of its picture business, intended to let it reach new marketplaces and cement its position in existing ones. The deal gave Reuters an archive of seven million pictures over a fifty-year span and, crucially, a route into the specialist sports market. Monique Villa said the acquisition allowed the group to compete effectively with the Getty Images Allsport agency, which was roughly twice the size of Action Images. Sport represented some 40 per cent of Reuters' picture wire, on which it was putting out more than 1,000 pictures a day; with Action Images, Reuters said, it would attract the specialist sport market and expand picture sales beyond its traditional media-client base into the commercial market, while Action Images would gain access to Reuters content.

Wembley Stadium Contract

One of the agency's most prominent commissions came after the acquisition, when Action Images signed a long-term contract with Wembley Stadium as its primary photographic provider, covering sporting events and public-relations assignments at the national stadium. Announced ahead of the stadium's official opening on 19 May 2007 with that season's FA Cup Final, the deal made Action Images responsible for creating and distributing a legacy of images from Wembley to global media, sponsors, partners and stakeholders. In addition to event coverage, the agency handled PR photography for the stadium and took on the management and marketing of Wembley's existing photographic archive — built up over decades of great sporting moments at the site — integrating it into a bespoke branded online photographic library accessible to Wembley personnel, accredited media, official sponsors and other designated partners.

The Archive

The Action Images archive was the agency's principal asset: more than seven million sports images spanning over fifty years of competition. At the time of the Reuters acquisition, over 1.5 million images were available online. The archive's depth — from mid-twentieth-century football and cricket through the modern era of global televised sport — made it a resource for publishers, broadcasters, sponsors and sporting bodies as well as newspapers. Its commercial licensing arm allowed sporting organisations and brands to draw on historic imagery for campaigns, publications and corporate communications, a market Reuters explicitly sought to develop through the acquisition.

David Jacobs's Later Ventures

After selling Action Images to Reuters in 2005, David Jacobs remained active in the picture industry as an investor. In 2008 his investment vehicle, Imvest Ltd, acquired the picture agency London Features International after it went into administration following a legal dispute over an alleged breach of copyright by a contributing photographer. The acquisition, reported by Press Gazette and the Sports Journalists' Association, was Jacobs's first major purchase since the Reuters sale. He said he intended to restore the LFI brand to its former glory, initially employing its staff on short-term contracts while he assessed the viability of the business. The episode underlined Jacobs's continued appetite for the agency business he had helped to shape.

Retirement of the Brand

Action Images continued to operate under its own name within Reuters for more than a decade after the acquisition. Reuters put the brand online with a new website in 2018, but in January 2021 the standalone site was closed and its address redirected to the main Reuters pictures hub. The trade press noted the passing of one of the strongest sports photo agencies of the 1990s and 2000s with regret. The agency's archive and sports-photography operation were absorbed into Reuters' wider pictures business, and the Action Images name — once a familiar byline on sports pages across Britain — ceased to trade as a separate brand.

Place in Sports Photography History

Action Images belonged to a generation of British specialist sports agencies that flourished between the 1980s and the 2000s, building businesses on the skill of staff photographers and the depth of their archives before consolidation and digital disruption reshaped the market. Its 2005 sale to Reuters was one of the defining transactions of that era, bringing an independent sports archive into one of the world's largest news organisations and sharpening competition with Getty Images. Though the brand is gone, its millions of images — of cup finals, championships, Olympic moments and the everyday drama of sport — remain part of the visual record of British and world sport, now distributed under the Reuters name.