How much should you charge for sports videos?
October 1, 2021
Are you at that point where you’re starting to get requests for hype reels and mixtapes and recruiting videos, and you’re really excited about it, but you have no idea how much you should be charging for them?
If you answered YES! Then keep reading as I will help you figure out exactly how much you should charge for your sports videos. I'm also going to give away a few of my personal negotiation tricks.
If reading isn’t your thing, just watch the VIDEO.
Things to consider when pricing your videos
In my opinion, there are four things you need to consider when deciding how much you should charge a potential client. Experience, equipment, expenses and time. Let’s go through each of them individually and then I’ll explain how they all fit into a very simple system I use to charge my clients.
Experience
Let’s start with experience. You’re never going to make as much money when you are just starting than when you are 5-10 years into your career. That’s just a fact. You have to accept that you’ll be making less money at first, but the key is to know how and when to start charging more money, which I’ll explain a bit later.
Equipment
Another thing you need to consider in a similar way is your equipment. You want to charge your clients for using your equipment but, again, the camera kit you start with is not going to be worth as much as the kit you’ll be using 5 years later. And that’s not just a fact, that’s a very serious advice.
If I can go off-topic for a minute here. You should only buy equipment that you can afford. Don’t buy anything on credit unless it’s for a guaranteed job that will pay it all back. Otherwise, if or should I say when you have a couple of dry months with not much going on work wise, those payments are going to sting. And they will also come with a certain smell… the smell or regret.
Expenses
The third thing you need to consider when charging a client is the potential list of expenses that might come with their project. For example, will you need to pay someone to help you? Will you need to rent extra equipment like special lights or a gimbal? How far is this job from where you live? If it’s a long drive you might want to include traveling expenses. Anyway, my point is that these are all things to consider so that you don’t end up spending money while you’re supposed to be making money.
Time
And finally, the last thing to consider when charging a client is your time. More specifically, how much do you value your time? That’s a very important question. And just like the chicken or the egg, there’s no right or wrong answer. It just depends on where you are in your career and what your goals are.
Take me for example, when I arrived in Australia 9 years ago coming from Canada (Montreal represent), it didn’t matter that I already had 10 years of experience by then. Because I was starting from scratch in a new market where I didn’t know anyone, I had no network, no contacts, and all my experience didn’t really mean much because it was all with companies that no one in Australia knew anything about. So, I was very much so like a beginner who’s just starting in sports videography like many people reading this right now.
I was applying on jobs for a while with no luck whatsoever. At that point I could have sat at home thinking “I’m not lifting a finger until I get a job worthy of my 10 years of experience because my time is valuable and I won’t accept anything less than what I know I’m worth.” But instead, I went the other way. I thought, since no one wants to hire me, maybe I can just focus on freelancing by reaching out to teams who I know desperately need help with their videos simply by looking at their website and their socials. And just like a drug dealer, I was even willing to give them the first taste for free. But I wasn’t going to do just a basic edit because I wasn’t making any money. Instead, all the teams who accepted my free video offer ended up with some of my best work. Because I knew that those free videos were going to be my calling card not only with them but also with every other team who was going to see those videos. And about a year later, I was running my own business dedicated to sports videography and working for some of the biggest teams in Australia.
So, my point is that at that time my biggest asset was time. I didn’t have any money, I didn’t have any fancy equipment, all I had was time… And lots of it! So, I was willing to completely devalue my time and invest it into projects that I felt were going to eventually give my time more value than ever. And it worked.
But let me tell you another story, because not everyone reading this wants to become a full-time videographer. Some of you already have a job and are perfectly happy just to do this sports videography thing as a side hustle on the weekends.
And in that case, you shouldn’t devalue your time. A lot of people in that situation make the mistake of thinking that, because they have a full-time job, it’s ok to make videos for other people for little to no money. But trust me. If you’re good at what you do and people enjoy your videos, because they’re so cheap, people are going to ask for more and more. And then you’ll be in a situation where all your free time is spent working on other people’s videos just for a few bucks. And once you spend 2, 3,4 or 5 weekends in a row doing just that, that good old smell of regret is going to creep back in.
In a side hustle scenario, because you don’t have a lot of time left after family time, work time, personal time and whatever else you got going on in your life, you should definitely value your time and don’t under sell it.
How much should you charge?
Now that you have a better idea of how to value your time, let’s see if we can translate that into actual money figures. Typically, you want to offer a half-day rate and a full-day rate. This is where, depending on how much you value your time, your rate will go up or down.
A good place to start is by looking at how much the professionals in your area are charging. Then you can basically decide where you want to position yourself in comparison to them based on your level of experience. And, like I said earlier, don’t forget to also factor in your equipment. A good way to do that is to look up video equipment rental places in your area to see how much it would cost to rent your camera kit or a similar one for a day. My advice would be to charge about 50% of what they do. That way, when you quote people, instead of giving them one big number that’s going to scare them and make them feel like all that money is going in your pockets, you can break it down by saying I’m charging you that much for my time, that much for my equipment, and that much for my expenses. That way it’s a lot easier for them to accept the big number because they understand what it’s for. Also, if they do their research and try to get a better price on the equipment, they’ll quickly find out that you’re actually giving them a pretty good deal.
And remember earlier when I said that when you’re starting it’s ok to keep your prices low, but the key is to know how and when to start charging more. Well, here’s another trick for you. What I would do as a beginner is quote prices similar to the professionals in my area but also include a 50, 40 or 25% discount. That way, obviously the client is happy to get the discount, but it also educates them on how much the video is actually worth. So, when the day comes that the discount either gets smaller or disappears all together, if they are happy with your work, they’ll most likely be thankful that they got the discount from you in the first place and happily pay the full price.
To summarise everything so far, you need to decide how much your time is worth, find out how much your equipment is worth, include all your expenses, and break it all down in a quote to which you can apply a discount if necessary.
Extra tips
And one last tip before I let you go. It’s also good business to have different tiers of price rates for different types of clients. For example, if you’re working a lot around high school football, you should have a price rate for individuals who hire you directly, a slightly higher one for schools and an even higher one for businesses. Because they all have different budgets that they spend very differently.
And don’t be afraid to start with a high number by the way, don’t sell yourself short because you’re scared that this potential client will say no. If they’ve seen your work already, that means they like what you do, and they want to work with you. So, if the price is too high, they’re much more likely to try to talk you into a lower rate than they are to simply move on to another videographer. And when they start negotiating, that’s when you go back to that drug dealer mentality and offer them a 10 or 20% discount for the first video only.
I hope this article was helpful. If you want to learn more about the sports videography industry, make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel for weekly videos.
by Edris Toussaint - Beyond the Game founder
