The Mega Agency is partnering with the News and Entertainment division of Australia’s premier photo agency, Snapper Media, the two companies announced today, September 12th, 2016.
The Snapper News and Entertainment division will operate under Mega’s name and both partners are confident the new venture will become an even more formidable player in the Australasian markets.
Snapper Media, a Great Bowery company, will continue to solely operate the market leading Celebrity Studio and Creative Lifestyle divisions, which represent the world’s most highly sought after photographers and collections in the premium space.
Mega founder Kevin Smith, former owner of Splash News, said he was thrilled to have pulled off a deal which he said would be great news for both clients and contributors.
He said adding Australia and New Zealand to the number of global territories in which Mega would be selling directly meant more money in the pockets of the all-important contributors - and promised more announcements in the run-up to launch.
Mega still does not have a website where a customer can go to purchase images, but they have promised that they will launch it soon and it will have 30 million images at launch. Mega also announced a
deal with Newscom a couple weeks ago.
Who Wins?
One thing that is not clear from the information supplied to the press so far is whether photographers are likely to be winners in all this.
It appears that most, if not all, of the images Mega will be offering to customers will be from other agencies, not directly from photographers. I can not get any information as to how many photographers have signed with Mega directly.
Assuming that Mega gets most of its images from other agencies then it will take a cut (we don’t know how much) of the gross fee paid by the customer before paying the remainder to the parent agency who then pays a royalty to the image creator.
Based on their Splash experience Kevin Smith and his team certainly have great contacts with editorial image buyers around the world. They may be able to make sales in territories that the photographer’s parent agency has been unable to penetrate, but the photographer will be giving up an additional percentage of the gross fee paid by the customer to another middleman.
In some cases, the agency Mega gets its images from is already getting some of the images it is supplying Mega from a third agency. Consequently, there will be three cuts before the photographer sees his share of what the agency he works with receives.
The question in all this for the photographer is whether Mega will make enough additional sales over and above what his parent agency might have made directly to provide significant additional revenue for the photographer. Another thing that is not usually explained to the photographer is the actual percentage of the gross fee paid by the customer that the photographer receives.
In one sense any additional money received – no matter how small -- is more than the photographer would have had without the sale. But is it possible that the photographer’s prime agency could have made the sale at the same, or a higher price. Also, would it have been possible for the photographer to place the same images non-exclusively with both agencies, made sales in both territories and eliminated a middleman cut.
Prices are already low and with all the cuts image creators often get pennies. If the creators could be directly represented by Mega that might be a good deal, but it is my understanding that they will be very selective in the creators they represent.
More On Snapper Media
Kym Shields, Managing Director of the Snapper Media Group, said she was excited by the partnership, “ Snapper Media’s Celebrity Studio and Creative Lifestyle divisions lead the market. The News and Entertainment genre is fast changing and this partnership ensures all of our divisions remain the most competitive in the world.’
Snapper, founded in 1999, has an archive of 25 million images from a vast network of suppliers from across the world. In 2013, Snapper Media was acquired by Great Bowery, an international entity comprised of leading agencies in the fashion and luxury image-making industry including Trunk Archive, Gallery Stock, Folio-ID, M.A.P, CLM, Streeters, The Production Club, Bernstein and Andriulli and Tim Howard Management.
(Will Mega be selling Trunk Archive and Gallery Stock images in the U.S. and UK thus reducing the photographer’s royalty share?)
Mega will bring its wealth of exciting new content to the region, which will further enhance Snapper’s second-to-none relationship with Australian and New Zealand publishers.
Naomi Roe, who has been with Snapper for nearly five years, and has worked at some of Australia’s best-known magazines, including Woman’s Day, NW and New Idea, will be Mega's Head of Sales in Australia.
Natalie Joyce has been recruited from the Daily Mail Online as a Photo Editor/Licensing Agent. She has previously worked for Woman’s Day, New Idea and Girlfriend magazines in New Zealand.
Said Smith: "With the fantastic content Snapper gets from its existing Entertainment News partners, and the new and exciting content Mega will be offering, we believe we’ll offer a package that is second to none.
“What’s more, photographers and videographers will be putting their content in the hands of people who know and believe in what they’re doing, not just in Australia, but in the most important markets across the world.
"This really is just the beginning of the Mega revolution - there's plenty of more surprises to follow in the coming weeks. We think both contributors and clients are going to love what Mega has in store.”
Mega CEO, Tom Tramborg, a former Senior Director at Getty Images, said: “We are extremely delighted with this partnership, which will help us achieve our ambitious goals for rapid top-line and profit development.
“With the satisfactory execution of our pre-launch plan, a number of exciting partnerships under way and our imminent global launch, we maintain very optimistic of our ability to truly disrupt the market.”
Agencies or individual photographers wanting Mega to sell their content directly in Australasia should make contact, he said.