The Indianapolis Colts had to take down their highly anticipated annual video release of the schedule for reasons they explain in their statement.
The NFL has recently ramped up its overall emphasis and production of schedule releases for social media purposes. The league is once again trying to fill its downtime of an offseason with as many ‘events’ as possible and the annual schedule release videos are the latest installment of this initiative.
Yesterday was the highly anticipated release date in question and the Indianapolis Colts deleted their Minecraft-themed schedule release video (which can still be viewed via this hyperlink) soon thereafter due to a couple of complications.
First and foremost, what got the internet riled up and was presumed to be the sole reason behind the Colts’ deletion is the Week 1 inclusion of a shot that was taken at Dolphins superstar wide receiver Tyreek Hill. In the short clip, Hill’s viral pre-game arrest last season that led to questioning of police misconduct was mocked by way of the Coast Guard arresting a dolphin-ified version of Hill.
Secondly, and perhaps the true reason behind the Colts’ deletion, scrapping the video altogether was due to exceeding rights with Microsoft — who owns Mojang, the company behind Minecraft. The Los Angeles Chargers also produced a Minecraft-themed schedule release video, but the difference between the two organizations is that the Chargers had received clearance to do so.
At the beginning of the Bolts’ video, they clearly state, “Minecraft used with permission from Microsoft Corporation. Any opinions or commentary in this video are not endorsed by Microsoft Corporation or Mojang AB. TM & © Mo jang AB.”
Since said deletion, the Indianapolis Colts have reached out to Tyreek Hill’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus, to pass along their apologies to his client and he responded by saying that Hill did not take offense to the mocking whatsoever. Even Tyreek Hill himself tweeted earlier today to confirm there weren’t any hard feelings and would go on to say, “Should’ve left it up Colts. [I] thought it was funny.”
The Colts have since released a statement regarding the video’s deletion, saying, “We removed our schedule release video because it exceeded our rights with Microsoft and included an insensitive clip involving Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill. We sincerely apologize to Microsoft and Tyreek.”
Regardless if people feel the Colts should’ve kept the video up, copyright infringement is nothing to mess with, and abiding by the rules in place should’ve been priority number one. Given that said clearance wasn’t a priority, the Colts’ social media department suffers from hard work lost.