The Associated Press and National Football League enter into exclusive commercial licensing agreement

The Associated Press and the National Football League today announced an exclusive agreement that makes the AP the worldwide licensing agent of NFL still images for commercial use.

Under the agreement, the AP will be able to sell its own NFL images, reserved until now for editorial purposes, for commercial use. In addition, the AP will now license NFL-owned event photos for commercial use and sell them for editorial purposes.

The agreement covers NFL images, as well as the iconic and historical images in the AP Images’ NFL archive.

“The AP is proud and excited to join with the NFL in making available a rich trove of football images to a wide audience and market,” said Tom Curley, chief executive officer and president of the AP. “This agreement creates a powerful offensive line, anchored by the AP’s great photography and photo licensing expertise and the NFL’s terrific library of pre-season, regular season and post-season photographs, as well as events such as the NFL Draft.”

AP Images, a commercial division of The Associated Press, is one of the world’s largest collections of historical and contemporary imagery, with millions of images and a variety of content partners, including Ebony and Jet, the international photojournalist collective VII, and NBC Universal, among others.