EMPICS

About EMPICS

EMPICS is a British photographic agency specialising in sport and entertainment photography, best known as the photo licensing arm of the PA Images division of PA Media (formerly the Press Association). It brings together the news, sport and entertainment picture productions and archives of PA Media, EMPICS, the Associated Press and a roster of niche photographers, offering a comprehensive range of editorial photography from the United Kingdom and around the world, past and present. Founded in Nottingham in 1985 as East Midlands Pictures, it grew from a one-man regional news operation into one of the leading sports picture agencies in Europe before its acquisition by the Press Association in 2004 and its subsequent relaunch under the PA Photos name.

Origins in the East Midlands

EMPICS began life in the summer of 1985 as East Midlands Picture Services, founded by Phil O'Brien, a sole trader operating from an office in Nottingham. O'Brien had left a staff job as a press photographer at the Leicester Mercury, a title he had worked at since leaving Liverpool, where he had also worked in press photography. The new firm covered news, sport and features around the East Midlands, a region well served by sporting institutions that would become the agency's natural territory.

From 1986 to 1990 O'Brien employed other photographers and spent a large part of each month working for the Sunday Times, covering news, politics, business and sport around the country. The young agency's first great breakthrough came with its coverage of the M1 air crash at East Midlands Airport: O'Brien happened to be on the plane behind the one involved, and his colleagues managed to get the pictures without his involvement, securing seven front pages the next day. The profits from that coverage were invested in colour wiring equipment, and the company then began to focus its attention on sports photography, a specialisation that would define its next two decades.

The shift to sport

The decisive turn toward sport came after the agency's success in 1989 in getting the only colour pictures out of Poland to British newspapers when England qualified for the World Cup in Italy in 1990. After that triumph, EMPICS specialised in sport from 1990 onwards, a decision that reshaped the business entirely: in 1990, about 95 per cent of the agency's income came from live coverage, pictures sold to papers within 48 hours, whereas later only a small fraction of its revenue would come from that live work, with the archive and picture library business growing to dominate.

In 1994 O'Brien hung up his camera to concentrate on business development at the company, a move that paid off as the agency expanded. Towards the end of the 1990s it was branded as the Empic Sports Photo Agency, a name that reflected its standing as a national sports photography operation rather than a regional news agency.

Nottingham roots

For much of its independent life EMPICS was based in Musters Road, Nottingham, very near to Trent Bridge Cricket Ground and the home stadiums of Nottingham Forest and Notts County, an address that placed it at the heart of the region's sporting life. The agency later moved into the centre of Nottingham and expanded with many new sales staff as its commercial picture business grew.

Nottingham remained the agency's home throughout its independent existence, and the city's sporting culture shaped its output. The agency built close working relationships with the region's football clubs, cricket and other sports organisations, and its photographers covered the full sweep of English sport from the East Midlands base outward to national and international events.

UEFA Champions League photographer

EMPICS became the original official photographers of the UEFA Champions League, with its photographers shooting team photographs and headshots of the participating teams for the television broadcasters. It also produced commercial and advertising photography for TEAM Marketing, the company that produces the Champions League, giving the agency a privileged position at the heart of European club football's showcase competition.

The agency also acquired the collection of Peter Robinson, the FIFA photographer, and through that acquisition and its own coverage it gained a reputation as a worldwide stock football agency covering global soccer tournaments. The depth of its football archive became one of its most valuable assets, spanning World Cups and European championships as well as domestic competitions.

Acquisition by the Press Association

On 11 May 2004, EMPICS Ltd was acquired by the Press Association. Paul Potts, chief executive and editor-in-chief of the Press Association, said at the time that Empics excelled in photo marketing and had successfully embraced new technology to deliver exciting new products to customers. Business partners Caroline Hodinott and Phil O'Brien eventually left the company, which was then managed by PA.

The acquisition brought EMPICS into one of the great names in British news. The Press Association, the national news agency for the United Kingdom and Ireland, folded the Nottingham agency's sport and entertainment photography into its own picture operation, creating a combined archive and licensing business with coverage spanning news, sport and show business.

Relaunch as PA Photos

In March 2007 the PA group announced that Empics would relaunch under the new name of PA Photos. Steven Brown, PA managing director, said the business had grown successfully since its 2004 acquisition and was one of the leading editorial picture agencies in the UK, and that the team increasingly worked in partnership with other PA Group companies to satisfy the needs of media, rights owners, publicists and commercial clients in the UK and around the world.

Services offered under the PA Photos banner included the PA picture wire, the PA Photos picture library, ShootLive, the award-winning real-time digital photography streaming system, commissioned sports and entertainment photography, and photography and media solutions for PR companies alongside rights owner representation. The rebrand followed the incorporation of All Action Digital into Empics after PA Group acquired it the previous November, and was accompanied by a five-figure visual identity redesign by Mark Denton Design using stock pictures presented in the four print-process colours of cyan, magenta, yellow and black.

Historic collections

In November 2007 EMPICS secured the exclusive rights to market the historical sports pictures in the Sport & General and Barratts collections. The collections had been acquired by Alpha in 1996 and exploited in Alpha's specialist areas of news, royalty and personalities; under the new arrangement EMPICS acted as exclusive sales agency for all the sports photography. O'Brien said the agency had had its eye on the collection for over ten years, and that the depth of sports photography it could now offer was second to none, complementing other acquisitions such as the Peter Robinson FIFA collection. The company reported a significant increase in its share of the book market through the arrangement.

The collections marshalled under the EMPICS and PA Photos names came to include the Press Association archive, the Associated Press's worldwide news, sport and showbiz output, EMPICS Sport and EMPICS Entertainment. In 2007 the agency said its online digitised sports photo library contained some 600,000 images dating from the 1860s to the present day, spanning football, cricket, rugby, tennis, motor sport, golf, horse racing and many other sports.

Digital innovation

EMPICS was an early adopter of digital technology in picture delivery. O'Brien said in 2007 that over 95 per cent of the company's business was conducted electronically, with its New Media Stills Production technology delivering sports photos to websites and mobile phones in seconds. That same year the firm achieved a double success at the national E-Commerce Awards, winning high commendation in the regional e-business category for its use of the internet and technology, and a shortlisting in the mobility and wireless technology category for the national innovation awards.

The agency's embrace of electronic commerce was striking given its origins in physical picture wires: from investing early profits in colour wiring equipment in the 1980s, it moved through the 1990s and 2000s to an online photo library model in which the vast majority of transactions happened on screen.

The photographers

EMPICS trained and employed many photographers who went on to prominent careers. Past directors included the award-winning photographers Ross Kinnaird, Steve Etherington, Neal Simpson and Phil O'Brien. Its past news photographers included O'Brien and the British Press Award winner Rob Rathbone. Among its past sport photographers were Ross Kinnaird, Laurence Griffiths, Steve Morton, Rui Viera, Steve Etherington, Matthew Ashton, Graham Chadwick, Nick Potts, Michael Regan, Paul Marriott, Michael Steele, John Marsh, Steve Mitchell and Claire Mackintosh, many of whom moved on to rivals including Allsport and Getty Images, the Daily Mail, the BBC and freelance careers; Ashton went on to run AMA Sports Photo Agency and Chadwick to work for the Daily Mail.

Other notable employees within the industry included Martin Willetts, formerly Telegraph Sport picture editor; picture desk manager John Childs, who left for Allsport/Getty in 1997 along with photographer Laurence Griffiths; Simon Galloway, later group picture editor at Bristol News & Media; Simon Wilkinson, who went on to run SWpix; and Sarah Jeynes, who became a music photographer with the BBC. The roster of names that passed through the Nottingham agency reads as a who's who of British sports photography in the 1990s and 2000s.

EMPICS today

Today EMPICS exists as the photo licensing arm of the PA Images division, bringing together the news, sport and entertainment picture productions and archives of PA Media, EMPICS, the Associated Press and niche photographers. Its collections are marketed to newspapers, magazines, books, websites, sporting bodies and marketing agencies around the world, continuing the commercial picture business that O'Brien built from the M1 air crash coverage of the late 1980s.

The agency's journey from a one-man East Midlands news operation to the licensing heart of the Press Association's picture business mirrors the wider transformation of press photography: from colour wires and 48-hour live sales to a digital archive of millions of images licensed globally. The Nottingham name survives as a brand within PA Media's picture operation, a reminder of the regional agency that photographed the Champions League and built one of Europe's great sports photo libraries.