If you’re thinking of becoming an editorial sports photographer, don’t.
Or at least first read this 2015 interview with five veteran sports photographers.
This short article describes what has happened over the past dozen years in editorial sports photography.
Basically, the deal is, editorial sports photography is completely dead as a market for a photographer to make even a modest living. Dead. Kaput. Over. Flatlined. The best action photographers in the world, who freelanced or were staffers at the major sports magazines, are all out of work . . .
– Robert Seale, photographer
Maybe you’re still thinking of getting into editorial sports photography and you think these experienced photographers are wrong or maybe they’re exaggerating. Maybe you think it’ll be different for you. If so, you’d be a fool.
Professional sports photography for the editorial market is an endangered species. Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with editorial clients turning away from the professional photographer to sports enthusiasts who are willing to trade their photos for season tickets.
– Maria Piscopo, photo rep
This is very true. Here in Toronto, there are many part-time sports photographers who have full-time day jobs. They shoot sports events either for free (on spec) or $150 (or less) per day, assuming they can get time off from their day job.
One such guy comes to baseball games with almost $50,000 worth of gear (no exaggeration) and he gets paid $0 per game. He works entirely on spec. At that rate, there’s no way to make money but he’s only interested in being around the team.
Another person often comes to games wearing the home team’s jersey and hat. He shoots on spec.
A third such person shot a four-day summer event on spec. After six months, they said their commission on resales was $140. Parking at that event was $20/day. So the photographer grossed $60 for four days of photography.
I am working now with Getty who distributes my sports images . . . photos that used to go for $250 for a quarter page now may garner $5 for the same space with the photographer splitting that $5 with Getty.
– Michael Zagaris, photographer
Last week at a sports hall of fame event, I spoke with a photographer who was shooting on spec. This person gets $2.50 for each download. At that rate, how many downloads do you need before you make a profit? Just for the record, I got paid $360 for the two-hour event from which I sent three pictures.
The market is flooded with free or cheap wire pictures that are good enough for most end users. The ride is over. It was fun while it lasted.
– Brad Mangin, photographer
There are many to blame for this mess. I call it a mess because the demand for sports pictures is huge yet most stock agencies try to get their piece of the action by charging less and less and then hoping for volume.
We lose money on every sale but we make up for it with volume!
– Unknown
You can blame Getty for intentionally lowering prices to gain market share. Getty did slightly admit their predatory pricing was a mistake. But if not Getty, another online agency probably would’ve done the same thing. But Getty is/was the 800-lb gorilla and got the ball rolling at high speed. Once the race to the bottom had started, many fools joined in.
In this group of fools are the numerous “wire” services that flood the market with cheap pictures. The word “wire” is in quotes because these online stock sites aren’t wire services like AFP, AP, EPA, Getty(editorial), Reuters and the various national services. Instead they’re just commodity stock photo sites that use the word “wire” in their name or marketing to confuse potential customers.
Now add the numerous “sports enthusiasts” who shoot for free or a very low fee. These folks are more often interested in getting into events for free and being near their sports heroes rather than being concerned about the news value of the event. At a sports awards event last week, several “reporters” and “sports photographers” were busy doing selfies with, and getting autographs from, the athletes.
Some of these sports enthusiast photographers will say that $150 (or less) per day is all they can get. If they don’t take it, someone else will. But why lose money by working for a business model that intentionally underpays you? If you don’t value your work, no one else will.
Just for the record, I’ve asked for, and received every time, 35% to 50% increases from various wire services and magazines when I felt a job required it.
All this is not to say that photographing athletes or sports activities is dead. Only editorial sports work. If you can do commercial photography for a sports or sports-related client then you might be able to make a go of it. Even then, it won’t be a full-time job. You will still need to find many non-sports customers.
Hi Warren,
Thank you for the topic and links it’s very informative, as always.
What will happen to an editorial sports photography in 5-10 years?
I suspect that most sports events will be covered by one or two stock agencies. Most likely it will be Getty because of the way it structures its deals with sports leagues and entertainment events: free pictures in exchange for access and exclusivity.
Look how TV controls the live broadcast of sports. One TV network buys the broadcast rights to an event and it provides other TV networks with a free but brief “highlight reel” of the event.
This will happen with editorial sports photography. The exclusive host photo service will provide a few free photos to the various news publications. If these publications want more, they will have to buy it from the host photo service. The host photo service would own all commercial rights (and pay the sports league a percentage).
This was talked about over a decade ago. But back then, news outlets said they wouldn’t use handout pictures and threatened to reduce or stop their coverage of any event that did this. Since sports leagues need daily coverage to generate interest, they never pursued the idea of having an exclusive host editorial photo service.
But that was then and times have changed. Newspapers and magazines have fewer photo resources today and so they have less power to threaten. If a sports league lost daily news coverage, I bet that league could easily ramp up its online presence and its use of social media. Any league could easily produce its own online daily “sports magazine.”
Some sports events would love to get rid of all photographers. To these leagues, photographers are just a nuisance. The NBA, NHL and MLB have reduced the number of photo positions and increased the number of TV positions. Even tennis has eliminated some photo positions.
When an exclusive host photo service happens, daily news coverage of pro sports will slowly drop. Also, exclusive photo service means a drop in quality since the photo service *will always* try to cut costs. Routine pro sports may become less important to people. This will be good because there are more important things in the world.
Sports just gives people something other than the weather to chat about.
Sports is one of the lowest-read sections of a newspaper. Less than a third of readers view the sports section. The news section is, by far, the most-read section and this is where newspapers are directing their dwindling resources.
Even Sports Illustrated is failing. This is why SI is pushing into the swimsuit business: its own line of swimwear, its own stable of models and a year-round swimsuit magazine business.
One reason for the lack of interest in sports is that pro sports have become repetitive, meaningless information. On any given day, how many sports games are there? Each season, over a thousand baseball games, over a thousand basketball games, over a thousand hockey games, etc. In tennis and golf, every event is the same players doing the same thing over and over again. Only the venue (barely) changes.
Pro sports and TV are to blame. In their non-stop greed for money, there are too many teams playing too many games on too many TV broadcasts. It’s boring to the public, except perhaps the hardcore sports fans and those who bet on games.
TV sports channels, with their round-the-clock coverage of anything even remotely sport-ish, have killed the golden goose. More is not better.
The infinite flood of photographers has killed the “glamorous” but low-hanging fruit of game action photography. But remember that it always floods from the bottom up.
«Newspapers and magazines have fewer photo resources today and have less power to threaten».
And why do newspapers and magazines have fewer resources? They are just greedy. They still have the opportunity to hire freelance photographers, but it will be more expensive than having access to the gallery having a subscription.
«I bet it could easily continue by ramping up their online presence and use of social media. Any league could easily produce its own online subscription daily “sports magazine”.»
OK. If the league will use the photo of the one-agency-(monopoly), then newspapers and magazines will use either the same content, or this is not unique, or not publish at all.
If there is a monopoly, then all the same Getty will need photographers for shooting all this. Yes, the number of sports photographers will be less, but still, those who need to shoot all this will be required.
Although sooner or later I think that video cameras with different angles can replace the limited possibilities of photographers, and you can cut and make any photo from the whole video.
>> I think that video cameras with different angles can replace the limited possibilities of photographers, and you can cut and make any photo from the whole video.
Very true. Also notice that Sports Illustrated last week started a TV sports channel to be streamed on Amazon.