Putting a Price on Content: Why Your Footage Is Worth More Than Your Feed

Most racers think of content as posts on their own social accounts, and they value it by the likes. Brands see it differently. To them, a racer's photos and video are raw material for catalogs, store displays, dealer banners, ads and launch presentations, much of which the racer never sees. If you want to price content properly, start by understanding where it ends up.

Content is something brands sign racers to deliver

At the Off-Road Sponsorship Summit's Valuations & ROI session, Matt Burroughs, deputy CFO of Monster Energy and a UTV racer, explained that Monster signs some athletes for content alone, and doesn't much mind whether they win or how big their social following is. The reason is simple demand. "We need content," he said. "And as social media becomes more prevalent, there's a bigger need for content."

Burroughs turns in his own team's footage to Monster's content portal. "Obviously we have photographers that take photos. But we do our own videos and we turn it in. And sometimes it gets used. And a lot of times it doesn't get used." He found out about one of the times it did get used from friends, who texted him a photo of his car on a gas station display in Minnesota. He had no idea it was there.

That's how a big brand uses an athlete content library. "So our marketing guys will go through content when they're looking to do the windows at a gas station or a store somewhere. And that's where we need content," Burroughs said. "And they need relevant up-to-date content." ▶ Watch the Valuations & ROI session

Social media is only a small part of it

I hosted that session, and I made a point I think most racers miss. "Your content could be used in marketing for catalogs, for calendars, for point of purchase displays, for coupons, for sales, for articles, magazine ads. There's a lot of things that your content could be used for more so than just social media," I said. "Everybody else thinks content is created for social. Social is a small part of it."

Burroughs agreed and gave another example. "My tire sponsor, System 3, there's a huge display," he said. It shows his car on the window of a major dealership, and the tire company uses his content with dealers around the country. He told racers not to wait to be asked: "As an athlete or a team, you have to provide that content to your sponsors. They may not know they want it, they may not ask for it, but you just keep feeding them the content. It's really important to do that." ▶ Watch the session

If a single photo can end up on a dealership window, the rate card for that window matters more than your follower count. A store display, catalog page or dealer banner each costs a brand real money to fill, and your content is filling it.

Win the event, not just the race

Ryan Arciero, president of 1Nine Industries and a four-time winner of Vegas to Reno, explained how his team thinks about it. "We're going to Vegas to Reno to go win Vegas to Reno, to win the race. But what to me becomes more important is winning the event," he said. "And what I mean by that is, as far as a race team goes, is ensuring the fact that either your sponsors, or your fans, or more importantly, the people that don't know they're fans yet, that you want to become fans, know where you're going, know you've been there, and know what's happening next after you've left."

The reason is practical. "It's hard for these sponsors, like Monster, they can't be everywhere, especially with everything that they're involved with," Arciero said. "So being able to provide them with that content, and do as much of a job for them as possible to be able to give them the tools they need to help promote what you're doing, and what they're doing, to me is huge."

The results show up in the numbers. Hookit credited his team with around 116 million impressions, and Arciero put that down to the team being "actively out there creating the content, pushing that out." And it doesn't take a big production. He once asked Brian Moore, who runs content for the team, how he chooses what to post: "He says, I don't know. He goes, I'm not a social media guy. He goes, I just pick what I think is cool to watch." Arciero's advice for racers: "Help them do their job and make it easy for them to push the go button." ▶ Watch Ryan Arciero on content

Timing changes what content is worth

When content goes out matters as much as how good it is. Matt Martelli, CEO of the Mint 400, told the Off-Road Summit that measuring the event's social media with Hookit changed how the race spends money on content. Like everyone else, the Mint 400 had been putting most of its effort into post-race coverage.

"What we saw was that we have the most valuable windows in order of sequence are pre-event, during event and then post event, and post event frankly very few people care because they've moved on to the next thing," Martelli said. "And so once we learned that, we're like, okay, we need to stop spending so much money on post event content and focus on pre-event content, and that paid dividends." ▶ Watch Matt Martelli explain this

Racers should take note. The build-up to a race, the testing, the travel and the live coverage during the event are worth more to a sponsor than a highlight reel posted a week later. If you're pricing a content package, put the most value on the content that comes before and during the race.

Shared content adds up for both sides

Some brands want to use content together with you rather than take it over. Mark Krumme of Eibach Springs said his company isn't trying to keep racers' content to itself. "We are not asking for white label, you know, turn it around and use it on our own stuff. That is nice, I will take that, but their success is our success, so the more we can do together the better," he said. Instagram's collaboration posts help, because a shared post "falls on everyone's channel" and "expands the reach and the engagement so much."

Eibach also adds its own resources. "I don't have a huge budget, but what I do have is a very talented media team and some reach," Krumme said. His team went to a test day with Jason Coleman, Eibach's trophy truck racer, and shot what Krumme called "a really cool collaborative commercial that we're now running on Flo" to promote the company's motorcycle springs. ▶ Watch Mark Krumme on media content

That relationship shows how content can grow into money. Coleman's deal with Eibach started as a media partnership. "It was a small partnership, and then obviously now it's becoming the Eibach truck," Krumme said. ▶ See the full conversation

How to put a number on it

Content is hard to price because so much of its value happens inside the sponsor's company. You can still estimate it. Ask each sponsor where your images ended up: displays, catalogs, dealer banners, ads, sales presentations. Then find out what that placement would have cost them otherwise. Add your own reach, collaboration posts and live coverage. Then show the total in your proof of performance report, the same way you would show a magazine write-up.

The takeaway

• Send sponsors usable photos and video after every event, whether or not they ask. Clean, recent, high-resolution content gets picked up.
• Ask sponsors where your content was used, and log each use with what that placement would normally cost.
• Value content made before and during the race more highly than post-race recaps, and plan your shooting around that.
• Use collaboration posts and offer to shoot alongside a sponsor's media team, so the content works on both sides.
• Price content packages as a deliverable in their own right, such as a set number of videos or photo sets per season, not as an extra.