Sports Content Licensing Journey

Alex Chung shares how GIPHY took a different approach to content licensing compared to other startups.

"Most San Francisco startups ride off of fair use. Fair use is cool and there's legal precedent, but once you try to monetize, no one wants to advertise on your platform when you're using weird fair use content.

I used to work at MTV on music videos and did licensing, so Day 1 we decided to be 100% licensed content. We have UGC content which is about 10% of our catalog, but 90% is all licensed. This includes every sports league - NFL, NBA, all the movie studios, pretty much anything you see.

It took us 5 years to get those rights. That's why we're totally clean from a copyright view - we don't have problems because we work with artists and content providers directly. They see this as a huge win because here's someone not ripping off their content but working with them directly. This is why it's easy for us to get advertisers, because we've been straight on board with it."