NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Getty Images, the world leader in visual content and communications, and Visual China Group (“VCG”), a leading Chinese visual communications and new media business, today announced an exclusive distribution partnership that will enable Getty Images customers to access the extensive visual library from Corbis Images. As a result, the existing Getty Images collection of almost 200 million images will expand to include Corbis Images content, creating an unprecedented collection of images, videos and historic archival content for creative and editorial use worldwide.
The partnership follows VCG’s acquisition announced today of Corbis Images, Corbis Motion and Veer. Under the terms of that agreement, Unity Glory, an affiliate of VCG, will own and manage the worldwide images and motion archives, names and trademarks associated with these three Corbis licensing brands and Getty Images will have exclusive distribution rights to these Corbis brands and content.
VCG has partnered with Getty Images for over a decade to market and distribute Getty Images’ award-winning content exclusively in China. After a transition period, Getty Images will exclusively offer Corbis creative stills, Corbis Motion content and Corbis archival and documentary content to its global customer base outside of China.
This partnership brings together the best creative and editorial imagery and combines Getty Images' renowned Hulton Archive, the largest privately held archive in the world with an estimated 80 million images dating back to the beginning of photography, with Corbis’ Sygma and Bettmann archives. The Bettmann Archive is a significant historical image collection comprising of more than 16 million photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries, while the Sygma Archive holds 34 million images covering Europe’s most important historical events.
“As the most trusted and esteemed source of visual content in the world, Getty Images is always innovating and investing to bring customers the most comprehensive and diverse offering of quality content,” said Craig Peters, Senior Vice President, Business Development, Product and Content at Getty Images.
“We are excited to deepen our longstanding partnership with VCG, a trusted business partner for Getty Images in China, and to offer an unprecedented breadth and depth of gold-standard content across creative, editorial, archival and video, which customers will be able to access through an expanded and unified service at gettyimages.com and through our market leading sales teams all over the world.”
Amy Jun Liang, Chief Executive Officer of VCG, said: “We are proud to work with our partner Getty Images to assemble such impressive visual assets and work together to better serve our customers around the world. This maximizes the commercial value of the assets, strengthens our market position in the industry, and marks a significant milestone in the expansion of our business portfolio to the world. As one of the largest companies in the image industry, we foresee a growing interest in China and around the world for premium visual content and we look forward to collaborating with Getty Images to fulfil this demand.”
Getty Images will create specific collections to house this new content on gettyimages.com, where it will sit alongside award-winning content from Getty Images’ own staff photographers, its network of over 200,000 contributors and from approximately 330 existing image partner relationships, including prestigious partners NBC Universal, BBC Worldwide and AFP.
Getty Images’ purchasing options such as Premium Access agreements and recently introduced UltraPacks, the simplest way to buy and download content across creative, editorial, archival and video, will provide streamlined and flexible ways for customers to search, purchase and download imagery.
VCG is China’s largest image licensing company. Its VCG.com website is China’s largest online licensing and copyright distribution for premium visual content, and its contributors’ network includes more than 14,000 photographers and artists and hundreds of image partners globally, serving the needs of advertisers, media outlets, and other organizations using licensed images, videos and musical content.
VCG and Getty Images will immediately begin work to migrate Corbis content, with migration to be completed as quickly as possible to ensure a seamless transition for customers, contributors and other partners. In the interim, Corbis customers will continue to access this content in the usual way via the Corbis websites and sales team.
Details about the transition will be communicated to customers and contributors in the coming weeks.
About Getty Images:
Getty Images is the most trusted and esteemed source of visual content in the world, with almost 200 million assets available through its industry-leading sites www.gettyimages.com and www.istock.com. The Getty Images website serves creative, business and media customers in almost 200 countries and is the first place people turn to discover, purchase and share powerful content from the world’s best photographers and videographers. Getty Images works with over 200,000 contributors and hundreds of image partners to provide comprehensive coverage of more than 130,000 news, sport and entertainment events, impactful creative imagery to communicate any commercial concept and the world’s deepest digital archive of historic photography.
Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of still and moving imagery in communication and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life. For company news and announcements, visit our Press Room, and for the stories and inspiration behind our content, visit Stories & Trends. Find Getty Images on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr, or download the Getty Images app where you can explore, save and share the world’s best imagery.
About Visual China Group Ltd:
Visual China Group (“VCG” or “the Group”) is a leading visual communications and new media business in China, and among the largest image licensing companies in the world. VCG owns and manages China’s largest premium digital visual content platform, and is the first destination of choice for creative and media professionals to purchase and manage such content in China. Through its online licensing and copyright distribution platform VCG.com, the Group offers products including still imagery, videos, music, multimedia and other digital content to approximately 15,000 advertisers, media outlets, businesses and other organizations in China. It also operates China’s largest and most popular branded online communities for designers and photographers. The Group further connects consumers and businesses with its capabilities in licensing and advertising across multiple sectors. Through Tungstar.com, the Group provides premium entertainment content and integrated marketing solutions to media agencies, advertisers, film-makers, producers and celebrities. Through a strategic entry into tourism, education and other sectors of high relevance to visual communications, the Group also leverages its core competence to capture the strong consumer demand for visual content.
Founded in 2000, VCG was the first company in China to license image and distribute copyrights through propriety online platforms, and has grown into a well-recognized player in the industry. In 2014, VCG was listed on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (000681.SZ) and commands one of the industry’s largest market capitalizations. The Group has over 600 employees, with subsidiaries in major cities in Greater China including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Taiwan.