Sport shooting business opportunity - Not sure about paperwork

My son plays soccer for a soccer club, and I've been doing team photos, player card photos, and action shots of all the boys on his two teams as a favor to parents. Now I'm being asked if I'd be interested in being the club photographer...with a twist. I'd do team photos of all the teams in the club and individual posed and action shots by request (of parents). The profits are to be split (we haven't settled on the split) between me and the club. It's part fundraiser and part business opportunity for me. I have a bunch of questions, as I've never been approached to do anything like this before:

1. Do I need or should I negotiate a contract with the club that gives me exclusive rights to do this? If so, can anyone point me to a sample contract that might get me started?

2. Do I need a release for everyone in the team photos...or a single release form that everyone signs, if I might possibly use the picture to advertise for future business? If I only offer the picture for sale and don't use it for advertising, do I need a release?

3. Assuming I need a signed release of some sort, can I just add wording for the usage license on the form?

4. I would offer the pictures for sale on my smugmug site so folks can order prints and merchandise of their choosing, but some of the profits are actually going back to the soccer club. So I'm not sure how to do this. I'm also not sure what would be reasonable to charge. Priced too high, and few people will buy them. Too low, and I barely recover my own costs and provide little back to the club. Any guidelines?

5. It's been suggested to me that I provide pictures in some format that's unique and different from what your typical parent with a point-and-shoot can do. I'm looking for ideas here.

6. Should I treat any individual photos as separate and work out specific arrangements with the parents, or should I prepare something more comprehensive in case there's a large demand for individual photos and do this on a team basis?

If any of you have done this sort of thing, I'd love to hear how you handled it! Thanks.

sdipirro wrote in post #14204844
1. Do I need or should I negotiate a contract with the club that gives me exclusive rights to do this? If so, can anyone point me to a sample contract that might get me started?

Yes - You don't want someone seeing what a good gig it is an offering the coach a backhander or offering the team a larger % to let them muscle in. Get a contract - if you can get it for two or more years even better.

Yes you do need a release if you will use the images for advertising. Probably not if just used as portfolio shots but if you do any adverts in the future then yes. Best to get them just in case. Not sure but you could probably get one release done by each team member to cover any shots taken that year.

Probably the best thing to do (given that the team are getting a share) is to have the team include your release in their sign up paperwork when someone joins the team. They then pass it to you. Just gotta make sure that someone joining the team part way through the season doesn't get missed.

Best not to because they are two totally different things. The release form is the subject granting permission for their likeness to be used for commercial purposes (meaning advertising). - you selling a print is not considered "commercial use".

The usage license is you, the copyright holder, granting a license for others to use the image. You would normally allow them to use the image for personal use and possibly display online (if you give digital files) but prohibit commercial use or any commercial exploitation. They can't sell copies of the image, or sell it to a company to use in advertising and also shouldn't be able to enter your photo into competitions - you don't want them winning cash prizes for your creativity.

Just keep very good track of how many shots you sell and issue the club with a statement. They then invoice you and you pay the invoice.

This is a fairly simple thing to research. Do a search for togs in nearby towns/cities of similar size and go to their website to check prices. Obviously you may need to adjust slightly for your own situation.

So that would be well posed, well lit and in-focus
The key difference will be that you can get the team to pose and you can keep shooting until you get a keeper. Most parents will grab one or two shots and won't necessarily chimp to make sure they have a keeper.

Do a search through Flickr etc for team photos and look for interesting/unusual poses. Also think about shooting the team photos tethered so you can really get a good look at the images to make sure someone isn't blinking, winking or picking their nose. Shoot a batch, get them to take a break while you chimp the images and if necessary reform and shoot some more.

Are you talking about pricing here or organising the shoots? Easiest it the individual shoots are done after team shoots as you are already set up. As for individual pricing I assume you would have a standard package for a set price.

Thanks for taking the time to provide all that info, Dan. Much appreciated. While I agree about the contract issue, I'm a little nervous about the potential time commitment if I have exclusive rights. Plus, even with a contract, how do I enforce it. Say someone shows up at a game, shoots pictures, and then tries to sell them to parents. What stops them from doing that?

I see what you're saying about the release versus the usage license.

I've been doing exactly this sort of thing for my son's teams as a favor to parents. So I actually do know what I'm doing, and because parents of other kids on other teams have seen my work, they've approached me about doing this for the entire club. Doing team photos and some individual posed shots will be easy, and I think I figured out a way to do the action shot piece and charge separately for that. Again, thanks for the info!

Just to add a little more.....When it comes to pricing, I would suggest figuring out the base price of your packages first so that you are making enough money on each package/item sold. From there, just add in the additional amount the team wants from the sales. For instance, my base package prices are always the same, no matter what. If the team wants to use the photos as a fund raiser, I just add on however much they want to each package.....therefore I'm always making the same amount and it makes absolutely no difference to me if the team or league is taking a cut or not.

Well what have you been charging? Parents are going to be upset if all of the sudden they got to pay more.

sdipirro wrote in post #14208900
...Plus, even with a contract, how do I enforce it. Say someone shows up at a game, shoots pictures, and then tries to sell them to parents. What stops them from doing that?

The team does. Assuming the games take place on private property (school gym or school sports field) the school/team has the right to prevent people taking photos, just like any other land owner (malls, museums, etc) have the right to stop photographers shooting. You are basically paying the team a share of your revenue in return for an exclusive right to do commercial shoots and in return you can ask (insist) that they enforce the exclusivity.

Note: Once they have taken photos there is nothing anyone can do to stop them selling them. They own the copyright and can sell the images. However the team/school can ban them from future events.

Daship wrote in post #14209169
Well what have you been charging? Parents are going to be upset if all of the sudden they got to pay more.

If anyone was upset, I would just explain that part of the price is because now the photos are being used as a fund raising activity for the team....just be up front with about why the prices increased. Unless he has a huge profit margin, it would be un-reasonable not to expect prices to increase when another hand is in the pot.