Did He Jump or Was He Pushed?

Walking the Tightrope

Come in number 3?

When it comes to filming and media accreditation at the prestigious Badminton Horse Trials I’ve always felt as if I was walking a tightrope; unfortunately I finally teetered off the tightrope at 16:25 on Tuesday 2^nd May 2017. In this blog I examine the causes of this fall from grace and conclude that, while it was ultimately inevitable, there were steps I could have taken to soften the blow.

I know the murky world of media accreditation and broadcasting rights is fascinating to many so I thought it was worthwhile telling my story and pointing out some of the potential pitfalls for the unwary amateur.

How did we get here?

Going back to May 2014 I made an afternoon trip to Badminton with Harvey and we had a nice course walk and videoed the BE90 Grassroots Cross Country. I uploaded the video onto my fledgling Harveywetdog YouTube Channel and was delighted to be sitting at Badminton a couple of days later and receiving the following e-mail from BE:

Hi David,

Thank you for making such a lovely video for Badminton Grassroots – It has been popular on our Facebook page and we have been asked if there is one for the BE100.

Kind regards,

British Eventing Limited

I responded to say I hadn’t videoed the BE100 to which they replied:

No worries I will let them know. Thanks again, the video is very inspiring.

And that ladies and gentlemen is really all I want; a little bit of recognition, praise and encouragement.

I should add at this point that I also went on to make a short video of the full Badminton cross country, as I had in 2013, and a course walk video featuring the International Course which went on to win a prize in the BE Eventing Cinema competition for May 2014.

Dammed by faint praise

Roll forward a year and my plans were basically the same, to cover both competitions. However I was stopped in my tracks by a surprise e-mail from Hugh Thomas (in his capacity as Event Director) pointing out that, as much as he liked the Harveywetdog portfolio, filming any part of his competition for anything other than personal use infringed Badminton’s Broadcast rights for both the Horse Trials and the Grassroots.

The License Request

Following Hugh’s e-mail I wrote to Julian Seaman as Media Director and requested a LICENSE to upload video of the 2015 Event on YouTube. I set out exactly what I wanted to do and Julian replied and told me exactly what I couldn’t do! The only thing I was allowed to “do” was the Grass Roots because, as Julian put it, that reflected my “core viewership”.

So in response to my request for a License all I got was an e-mail giving me permission to upload video on to the Harveywetdog YouTube channel of the Grass Roots competition; there was no LICENSE per se. Julian’s final sentence read:

“It is fun stuff that you do, but unlike regular events, as Hugh pointed out, we are the top one, and visual moving images have a value”

Make of that what you will!

2015 at the Grass Roots went well, I got thoroughly soaked on cross country day but still managed to produce 10 videos across the 2 days. I was particularly pleased with “Happy”, that’s the sort of video I like to produce, and the cross country videos were also well received. I did however have difficulty getting around the site (they would not allow me onto the Grass Roots field in my car on Wednesday without a pass) so I decided to see if I could do something about that in 2016.

Formal Accreditation

By the time the 2016 season came around I was getting used to applying for formal accreditation for events so I decided to apply to Badminton as well; I wasn’t greedy and made it clear that I was just looking to continue the 2015 Grass Roots arrangement but with the added advantage of the freer access that a Media pass would give me. I didn’t hold out great hope but was delighted when the accreditation came through. I do not remember if the word License passed between us but I did make it clear I intended to upload video of the newly branded Mitsubishi Motors Cup. Having been given a License in 2015 there was no indication that this was time limited and even today the Badminton website does not stipulate that Licenses need to be renewed annually.

2016 was a very successful Grass Roots for me; everything came together, the sun shone, everything was recorded in 4K and I even had a featured rider with a top six finish. I thought the “Hero” video was one of my best and with the wisdom of hindsight I probably should have left it there; unfortunately I didn’t but decided to repeat the process in 2017.

The Clue's in the Name

When I publish my schedule for a particular year I always note “Videoing at all events is subject to agreement with the relevant rights owners”. However I put Badminton Grass Roots on the list for 2017 with a reasonable degree of confidence of being accepted. At BE’s request I shared the schedule with them in November 2016 and was not given any warnings about Badminton.

I can’t recall the exact details of the accreditation request I made to the Badminton website on 6^th March 2017; the details are made directly on-line and while they are acknowledged I was nor provided with a record. I doubt I used the word License but I would have made it clear that I intended to publish video and that this was in line with the previous arrangements from 2015 and 2016. Once again I was pleasantly surprised to receive the accreditation envelope addressed to the “Harveywetdog YouTube Video Channel” (the clues in the name duh!)

Too Big to Ignore……………………………………..

As April moved towards May I completed my videos from The NAF 5 Star Winter Dressage Championships and set about designing my core videos for Badminton. I painstakingly entered the names of all the 200 odd horse/rider combinations into Adobe Premiere Pro so that I would have a head start when it came to processing the cross country videos. I set out on 2^nd May with some trepidation (there is a lot that can wrong) but was confident that I had my accreditation in place and that that wouldn’t present a problem.

The morning passed easily enough recording a few key dressage tests and GVs and then I set off to record the course. About half way round I received a message from another equestrian social media site which indicated that the rights for the MM Cup had been sold and that there would be restrictions on videoing that event as well. I mulled this over as I completed the course walk, I thought about the “it is easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission” approach but in the end e-mailed the Head of Digital Marketing and Social Media for the Event to ask them exactly where I stood and then set off home.

………………………But too small to matter

I stopped for some diesel on the way home and realised that I had received two responses to my question on my 'phone; well in fairness I had one response and a direct e-mail from BE. I waited until I was parked outside the gates of Hillside House before reading them. I’ve learned that when people reply promptly it generally isn’t good news; the response from Badminton said nothing but deferred to the response from BE which read as follows:

We have been made aware that you have been filming the dressage at the Mitsubishi Motors Cup, this year however the Mitsubishi Motors Cup is being filmed for television distribution and the company has the exclusive rights to the competition footage, due to this you will be unable to film competition rounds from Wednesday 3rd May (as per the Broadcast rights, which form part of the Media Accreditation, found here: https://www.badminton-horse.co.uk/broadcast-rights/). Short clips (under 10 seconds) for social media are OK but not extended footage or entire rounds.

There is much to reflect on about this e-mail. Let’s put aside the accusative tone and start with the fact it came from BE and not from the Badminton Press Office. Badminton claim to own the broadcast rights for both competitions so what does it have to do with BE? Then there is the “we have been made aware” opening. Now I don’t know what they expect an accredited videographer to be doing and I certainly hadn’t been acting in a clandestine manner but the implication is I’d been up to no good and someone had informed on me. That felt quite chilling folks. I have my suspicions of who it might have been but I have no proof however this has taught me to be more careful who I speak to in future.

Now let’s think about the bizarre statement “you will be unable to film competition rounds”. Apart from being unenforceable this isn’t what the Broadcasting Rights link they provided says at all. The license would permit you to broadcast (which in my case means upload to Facebook or YouTube) the accreditation permits you to film. And why from the 3^rd May? (The next day). It could be they wanted to let me down gently or it could be that they realised they couldn’t retrospectively withdraw the implicit License they’d granted me by accepting my request for accreditation.

There are times when a little pain and angst can aid the creative process as shown in my 2017 show reel produced in a blur of activity on the evening of the 2nd May:-

What would we do differently next time?

Well obviously there isn’t going to be a next time and let’s be clear it is perfectly reasonable for Badminton to sell the Broadcast Rights and to make the deal exclusive. If on the 6^th March they’d come back to me and said sorry no video broadcasting this year I’d have had to accept it. At least it would have given me chance to make alternative arrangements and avoid taking time off work.

Clearly I should have recorded what I put on my accreditation form and in making my application I should have made my request for a Broadcast Rights license explicit and not implicit. People who own and control the rights need to be clear whether they are talking about filming or broadcasting. One is controllable the other isn’t. At the same time you have to appreciate that you are dealing with people who are either volunteers or have been press ganged into a role that isn’t their full time job. This is an error likely situation and if mistakes are made they need to be admitted to and rectified without compounding the situation with accusatory waffle and unsubstantiated jargon.

In the end you have to accept that the people who make the rules implement the rules the way they see fit and ultimately he who pays the piper will call the tune. But you do wonder, if there is going to be “television distribution”, shouldn’t it be advertised?

What next for Harveywetdog?
Photo ©Harveywetdog