Increase Your Event Revenue Using Photography

Planning, organzing, and putting on a race event is a very expensive and time-intensive endeavor. Getting a photographer to cover the race can seem like one more thing to cram into your to-do list and an expense that cuts into your revenue, but it doesn’t have to be this way. With other types of events, it makes sense for the planner to hire a photographer and pay them for the photos, but races are an entirely different thing where you can and should make the photography a revenue stream. In this blog I will explain how you can convert hiring a photographer into something that makes you money and increases value given to your participants.

The Race Photography Business Model

This model is something that a lot of race organizers are already implementing, but I still see many organizations who simply hire a photographer to be at their event. You may still be getting a bunch of beautiful pictures from the event that you can send out to participants, but it is a hassle for the participants to sift through an enormous gallery of photos to find the ones taken of them, there may not even be photos of every participant, and it is not the best way to provide value to the race participants. The photographer will also be operating within a budget and may be limited in scope by this.

The model that works much better is to find a photographer or photography company that sells directly to the racers. They won’t charge you a penny for any of the planning, scouting, photographing, editing, distribution etc. and will often offer you a cut of the profits or a flat rate for allowing them to be the photography provider at your event. If in the past you have provided photos to the racers for free and are worried about moving to a paid model, you can likely work something out with your photographer where each racer gets one free photo or something similar. Here at Stone’s Throw Productions, we offer photos from the finish line for free so everyone will get photos with no obligation to pay. When the racers see how many other beautiful photos there are, they often want to purchase more. Keep in mind that this model allows for there to be more photos provided along multiple points throughout the course. Offering all of the photos for free is great, but often results in not as complete coverage of every racer.

Profits increase as sales increase, and sales increase as there are more amazing pictures for the participants to chose from. The money coming in from this will very likely be drastically larger than the rate you would be paying them, meaning they can afford to provide a much better service. This includes sending someone out beforehand to scout the course, finding all of the best photo spots along the way, having a thorough plan for the day instead of showing up and figuring it out on the fly, bringing a team of experienced photographers to ensure every single racer gets photos of themselves, and providing a smooth experience when races go online to find their pictures.

They will be incentivized to provide tons of amazing photos and a smooth, enjoyable experience. And as they succeed, so will you since the more sales they get, the bigger your cut will be as well.

Provide a Better Customer Experience With Your Race Photos

Customer experience is incredibly important to the success of any event. Picking an enjoyable or intense courses that participants will be proud of completing, the experience participants have when signing up, providing aid stations, the amazing start/finish line setups, awards ceremonies, finisher rewards, having a functioning website, a positive community, etc. are all parts of providing the best possible customer experience. Having a great customer experience makes it more likely that participants will tell others about the great time they had and will return for future races.

The photography at your race events is just another piece of the customer experience puzzle. Participants have often trained for these races and overcome struggles to complete the course, so having beautiful photos from the event is something they will cherish. You want to ensure that any participant who values having those photos will be able to get those photos and not struggle to find them. Not every racer will want photos of themselves, but for those that do want them, if they somehow got missed and there are no photos of them, that will be a negative in their customer experience.

Photographers and companies specialized in providing this amazing experience for every racer will ensure there are no cracks in the experience your event provides.

How Racers Get Their Photos

Nowadays, there are amazing new technologies that help the photos get quickly distributed and easily organized so there is no more sorting through endless galleries. There are multiple ways this is achieved ranging in effectiveness.

The first way is one that I do not see all that often any more, but still helps with the process. This is by sorting the photos by the time they were taken and the location they were taken at. This works best if there are checkpoints along the course that track time. For example, if racers know they crossed checkpoint 3 an hour into the race and the photographer was just before that checkpoint, they can go straight to 59 minutes at that station and go until they find themselves.

That method still requires participants to do a bit of searching for their photos so it is not ideal. A better method is bib number recognition. This uses technology to identify bib numbers that show up in photos and groups them based on that. Participants can input their bib number and immediately see their photos. This way saves a lot of time, but can be a bit unreliable and limits the photographers because the bib number must be clearly visible in the photo. No good if racers have their bibs on their back or they have gotten dirty. This also limits the photos that can be taken for that same reason. You’ll miss out on close ups or more creative angles since the bib must be featured in the images.

The newest and most effective method is using AI to do facial recognition. Participants will be asked to upload a selfie of themselves when trying to get their photos and the software will analyze all of the photos and give them theirs. This works incredibly well in all types of conditions. It can account for mud, sunglasses, different angles etc. It saves everyone time allowing the racers to easily get all of their photos with no creative limitations on the look of the photos. The result is better looking photos, a smoother process, and an incredibly quick turnaround.

Having both the bib number and facial recognition working in tandem is the best there is. With a bib number and a selfie, there will be no photos that don’t get to the right person. It really is amazing the things technology can do!

Race Photography In and Around Colorado

If you’ve read this and feel this is something you want to begin implementing into your races, feel free to reach out! Stone’s Throw Productions has partnered up with a company called My Bib Number to provide top-tier race photography to the Colorado area. My Bib Number has developed amazing software that utilizes both facial and bib number recognition to quickly distribute photos to each racer. They have successfully captured events in the UK for decades and want to bring this amazing work back to Colorado, where the company’s founder started his photography journey. Here at Stone’s Throw Productions, we have years of professional event photography experience and management to ensure everything operates smoothly.

We offer every participant a finish-line photo for free so there is no obligation to purchase and do not charge race organizers a penny for our services.

Reach out to start a conversation about how we can increase your revenue and provide amazing photos to all of your racers!