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For race directors · pilot intake

Galleries that run themselves.

PodiumBase runs the photo + sales infrastructure for your race so your team doesn't have to. Athletes find their photos in seconds, your photographers get paid fast, and you stay in the loop on everything.

3-minute read · pilot intake open
What PodiumBase is

Four things we do, very well.

Matching

AI-assisted matching

Bib + face + time-window matching means athletes find themselves in seconds. No scrolling through 12,000-photo galleries hunting for their finish-line shot.

Sales

Athlete-direct sales

Each athlete gets a personalized gallery of their own photos with a flat-split checkout. The rest goes straight to the photographer's Stripe account.

Turnaround

Fast turnaround

Photos go live as photographers upload — not weeks after race day. The first finisher can have their photos before the last finisher crosses the line.

Visibility

You stay in the loop

Sales, payouts, refunds, and the athlete experience are all visible in your admin console. PodiumBase isn't a black box you hand the race to.

What it costs you

Transparent split. Nothing up front.

Athletes pay
The photographer
Direct via Stripe checkout · no markup.
PodiumBase takes
A small platform fee per sale
Pricing details on the kit call.
Stripe takes
Their processing fee
Standard rate, billed by Stripe.

Race directors pay nothing to host an event on PodiumBase. We make money when athletes buy their photos, alongside your photographers. No setup fee, no monthly fee, no listing fee.

How coverage works

Three ways your race gets covered.

Listing your event is always free. Getting it photographed can be free too — or guaranteed, if you want the certainty.

Sales-funded

Free coverage

A photographer covers your race at no cost to you, earning purely from photo sales. Listing is free, and so is the coverage — most pilot events run exactly this way.

Bounty-backed

Guaranteed coverage

Want a shooter locked to a specific zone, or guaranteed coverage when sales alone are not a sure thing? Fund a bounty · a held minimum that commits a photographer to cover it. It is the one optional lever, and you only fund the gap sales might not fill.

Community uploads

Crowd-sourced shots

Athletes and spectators add their own photos straight into the event gallery, so the course gets covered even where no pro is standing.

Sales-funded and community coverage cost you nothing. A bounty is the one optional lever · fund a guaranteed minimum only where you want a photographer locked to a zone. It is coverage you choose to buy, never a listing or hosting fee.

Want the detail before the call?

See the full pilot kit.

We've hosted the entire pilot race-director onboarding kit publicly · welcome packet, pre-event checklist, athlete communication templates, day-of runbook, reconciliation guide, support matrix, and FAQ. No sign-up; nothing gated.

Timeline

A 6-week run-up · plus a debrief.

T-4 weeks
Onboarding call

We walk through your event together · set up your org, your event page, and your photographer roster.

T-2 weeks
Photographer kits sent

Each photographer gets a kit · upload instructions, technical brief, race-day contact card.

T-1 week
Sample-upload dry run

Photographers upload a test batch. We verify watermarks, metadata, and matching are clean before race day.

Race day
Live ops · 4h SLA

Direct line to founders for P0. Uploads start flowing the moment photographers shoot.

+24 hours
Galleries published

Public event gallery is live. Personalized galleries arrive in athletes' inboxes as matches complete.

+7 days
First sales clear

Photographer payouts begin via Stripe Connect. Your sales dashboard is live.

+14 days
Race-debrief call

We sit down for 30 minutes · what worked, what didn't, what we ship next.

Race-day support

A direct line to the founders.

Race day is when things go sideways. Our deal is simple: if it goes sideways on PodiumBase, you can reach us in minutes — not tickets.

Founder mobile · P0

Active pilot race directors receive a mobile number for race-day P0 incidents. The number is shared on the kit call · not on this page · so it stays a real escalation lane.

EVENT-DAY support · 4h SLA

An EVENT-DAY-prefixed support lane runs at a 4-hour SLA during your event window. Tickets with that prefix skip the queue and route straight to on-call.

What athletes see

See the experience yourself.

Demo media

Riverside Twilight 10K

A labeled sample event with demo photos, bib matching, gallery filters, and the same photo-detail cart athletes use on race day. The checkout CTA routes into the real Stripe-backed checkout path; no fake purchase-complete rows are seeded.

Demo media · real cart path
Open sample event
What you get as a pilot RD

First-mover positioning, on the record.

01

Early-supporter recognition

Pilot race directors are credited on the launch page and across release notes. The first hundred events on PodiumBase are part of the story we'll be telling for years.

02

First crack at new features

Sponsor placements, club integrations, Strava push · pilot RDs see the work before anyone else and shape what ships.

03

Shape the V1

Your feedback drives the roadmap. We're small enough that a Wednesday email turns into a Friday deploy.

What we ask of you

Three asks. That's the whole list.

One event

Run at least one event on PodiumBase. Not a sample, not a side gig · a real race.

Honest feedback

Tell us what's broken, honestly. We'd rather hear it loud and fix it than read it in a review later.

30-min debrief

Sit down with us for thirty minutes within a week of the race. We bring questions; you bring your race-day notes.

Ready

Want to run a race on PodiumBase?

Start your org takes two minutes. We'll follow up to schedule the kit call.

Pilot onboarding kit · PodiumBase