BSR Agency

Photo press agency

BSR Agency, an international photo press agency, was founded in 2010. A total of 22 people work at BSR. Worldwide, 400 photographers and 31 partners in just as many countries are related to BSR.

The heart of the company is the online trade of mainly press photos and videos in the categories of Entertainment, News and Features. BSR works with freelance photographers in addition to their own photographers. BSR’s customers are media companies, including broadcasting companies, production companies, newspapers and magazine publishers domestically and abroad. Most sales (90%) take place online. The other part comes from diverse assignments. BSR has its own photo database in which over 200 million photos are stored. Every day, 100,000 photos and 700 videos are added. Annually, 2 million downloads occur on the BSR system.

Now and then, it happens that a unique photo goes viral worldwide and cross media within one day. The first time this happened was not long after the founding of BSR. Top model Naomi Campbell got hurt during a robbery and came out of the back door of the hospital wearing bandages. BSR had the only picture! This wen viral at nearly all TV stations, websites and newspapers in over 30 countries. It really boosted the start of the company.

The export is now around 30% of the turnover, but it is expected that this will continue to grow to 50%. Director Dillion Rekveld: “We are market leader in the Netherlands. We deliver all the photos and videos, and since recently also texts, to practically all publishers and TV producers. We need to go abroad to achieve growth.”

This is going really well. Since several years, BSR is the exclusive photo partner of the MTV World Music Awards and the Victoria Secret Fashion Show. The Deventer-based company will manage the international press during the lead-up to and during the entire event.

Export Ambition
The ambition is to grow in the countries where BSR is already active. In addition, product development remains important. Currently, a separate department is being built where the wide knowledge of photo databases will be traded on the market to third parties such as publishers and photographers. They are also working on User Generated Content. In addition to photographers, individuals can also place photos in the BSR’s database and get a share of the profits when the photo is sold.