The USA Today Sports Media Group is rebranding its sports photo service, U.S. Presswire, as USA Today Sports Images, continuing the company’s reorganization of its content assets.
The Gannett group bought U.S. Presswire in September 2011, and the 8-year-old photo service covers nearly 10,000 events a year. The rebranding follows similar moves over the past year, including the creation of the USA Today Sports Pulse aggregating content from Gannett outlets, the formation of USA Today Sports Digital Properties to house its action sports, mixed martial arts and Big Lead Sports assets, and the renaming of HighSchoolSports.net as USA Today High School Sports.
“This helps take U.S. Presswire from sort of a little-engine-that-could into a bigger player with the full weight of a $5 billion company behind it,” said Tom Beusse, USA Today Sports Media Group president. “And by getting the USA Today attributions and photo credits into all these other outlets U.S. Presswire does business with, it helps make the USA Today brand name ubiquitous in the marketplace.”
USA Today Sports Images, competing against outlets such as The Associated Press and Getty Images, will launch a reworked photo database and website early next year to coincide with the rebranding.
The U.S. Presswire shift also is a key strategic step in USA Today Sports Media Group’s eventual plans to syndicate the USA Today Sports Pulse to non-Gannett media outlets.
“We intend to aggressively syndicate our content, but we really can’t be in the syndication business without having images we own, being able to fully supplement the text,” Beusse said. “That was part of the thought behind acquiring U.S. Presswire.”
