... SI is not some dude w/o clue how to spell things in their paperwork... they can own the results (photos) when they contract a photog to cover a specific event, but they do not "hire" him exclusively forever prohibiting him to cover __other__ events for __other__ clients (for example).
Which is what I said in post #25 above:
It also depends how that exclusivity is formulated.
As for "smartness" of SI in contract formulating, that remains to be seen. There are many, many companies that tried to outsmart IRS or SEC, not always successfully (remember Enron?). It is like IRS audit of your tax returns. You might cheat on your tax returns for years and never get audited and caught, or you might do it once and get immediately caught.
The first red flag is if the six are fired and immediately hired back next day as contractors. Yes, it happens in many other cases, and yes many companies might get away with it for years, just like you can cheat on your tax return and not get caught for years. However, companies like SI are also highly visible.
However, let's assume that the new SI contract is careful about exclusivity. At some point, some or all) of the original six will get a different gig and gradually drift away. Which will leave SI to compete for images in the open market. As a consequence, SI will lose the edge they had in the past, i.e., well trained and motivated team, the rest could only look up to. They were successful as they had the best equipment, best access, best photographers, resulting in unique shots. I am not a sport fan, but I am assuming that is the reason (uniqueness and high quality) that attracted their readers. Once they start using crowd-sourced shots, or sharing shots from Getty Images etc., that fans can see everywhere else, their competitive edge is lost.
