Image rights and the bigger picture

LockerRoom At Parnell Park yesterday it was cold and windy and just to get a shiver running down your spine they were selling match programmes for euro3 a pop. This seems standard now, but still that's euro3 for a slender 16 page black and white programme.

And due to the new campaign on the issue of image rights there wasn't even an up-to-date picture of either team inside.

Does anybody have a decently worked out position on this business of image rights? If so, post it in and this column might adopt it as its own.

In every way it seems to be a case where sport is just getting away from us, where corporate lawyers and pin-striped agents have taken control of the world.

You can see every point of view except that of the fat cats. You just know that while you're busy seeing everybody's side of the story they'll be making out like bandits as per.

Personally, I'm a simple man and I like to see a reasonably up-to-date team picture in a match programme. I like to see what various players look like if only to know precisely who I am talking to when I beetle about looking for quotes afterwards. Yet, looking at the pictures used in yesterday's programme I can see why teams object to the business.

Both the Dubs and Tyrone were depicted as imprisoned behind those tacky billboards which sponsors have begun to insist are placed in front of them when they get their photo taken. To the PR suit, the sign says: "Buy our Stuff." To the rest of us it's saying: "Gaudy. Cheap. Demeaning."

The bigger issue is about context. It's hard to speak to players about the sanctity of amateurism in the modern game when they are asked first to make billboards out of their chests and then to line up for a team photo while some oily retainer insists that an advertising hoarding be placed in front of them.

It's bad and it's tacky, but is it enough for players to come over all Catherine Zeta Jones about it? Because, let's face it, while recognising the stripping of dignity involved in posing behind a billboard, the players just want the right to the little earner which comes with standing behind a billboard of their choosing and then invoicing for it themselves.

To this end, Dublin have not only been leading proponents of the heartwarming No Photo-op campaign, but last week they signed an exclusive deal with a proposed Dublin newspaper which will be edited by none other than Liam Hayes, the former cloven-footed Meath midfielder.

Now Dublin it should be said are a little bit of an exception in the game. Proximity to anything like silverware sets the city all ajangle and the Evening Herald turns blue with the excitement. The Herald, despite its club notes and Dublin GAA service, has always been something of a problem for a team who view the newspaper as merely being in the business of selling copies of their backs.

It's a two-way street however. The Herald and the media in general create a good deal of the excitement which makes the Dubs such a buoyant phenomenon.

I'm sure the team does sell papers for Tony O Reilly, but I'm sure also that the Herald sells tickets for the Dubs. I'm sure also that it is responsible for the enhanced image of players about the city. A few back pages are all you need to become famous or revered in this town.

There are ways of making that relationship between team and newspaper better and there are smarter methods of exploiting popularity through the form of image rights.

Dublin got a glimpse last summer through the sale of replica shirts of just how lucrative a good merchandising operation could be, right up to the point of opening a GAA superstore in Dublin.

I think it is possible to be against the principle of play for pay while also recognising that high-profile teams and players should be able to exploit their own image.

But a player isn't merely marketable because he puts on a Dublin jersey.

HE IS marketable because his club and his mentors and his teachers all put time into him along the way, he is marketable because many many people built up a tradition of GAA in Dublin, because wearing a Dublin senior jersey is still a privilege which less gifted players yearn for, it is not a burden.

And there are problems to be ironed out. What part of the profit from the player's image trickles down into the amateur organisation from which he is sprung? When we give a team a set of Dublin jerseys, does everything they can wring from them go towards the team holiday and the few bob in the pocket?

And how do we protect the brand that is the three castles and the sky blue jersey and the tradition that goes with it if players pop up all over the place endorsing and advertising items in Dublin jerseys?

It's just an opinion, but I thought the GPA sounded a lot more dignified before it became the Carphone Warehouse GPA.

The history of image rights probably best represents the difficulties involved. The first case involving the issue came in 1931 when a cricketer called Cyril Tolley sued Fry's the chocolate makers for using his image to sell their wares. He won. It is easy to sympathise with him. It was sportsman versus big corporation.

What though about the case of Arsenal v Mathew Reed? More sinister. Reed had been selling Arsenal souvenirs from a stand outside Highbury since the early 1970s. On his stand there was a notice which explained the gear wasn't official.

The High Court recognised that there was a distinction to be made between displaying a crest or club badge as a simple indication of affinity or support and displaying a trademark as a guarantee of origin. It referred the case to Europe, where, inevitably perhaps, Matt Reed lost.

When the Dublin footballers decline to sit for photos or decide to cut deals wherein they speak to certain papers for money it seems to me that they are picking an argument that the GAA is not ready to have made.

It seems also that the only way to get through the issue is to co-operate with each other before we see the courts establishing that a player owns his face and the rights to all images thereof, but that the county board owns the crest and distinctive jersey and all rights arising.

And we'll watch with a horrified fascination as we get robbed of the illusion that playing for your county is the be all and end all of sporting endeavour, the greatest thing and the sweetest thing. we'll be killed in the crush towards easy money.

And, finally, the price of it all will be passed on to us. It's the time of "where's da money?" Who said romance is dead?