5 Essential Terms Every Podcaster Needs in a Podcast Sponsorship Agreement for the Best Sponsorship Deals
Want to know which essential terms your podcast sponsorship agreement should have? These are the most crucial provisions every podcaster needs to get the most out of every sponsorship.
Taking your podcast to the next level and getting your podcast sponsored is extremely exciting, and if you’re anything like me, you are researching everything you need to ensure you get the most out of your sponsorships and have great long-term relationships with your sponsors. As a lawyer myself who drafts agreements for podcasters like you, I am giving you the crucial terms your podcast sponsorship agreement must have to get the most (income) out of your sponsorships (long term).
You will learn about all the necessary terms your podcast sponsorship agreement needs for your podcast sponsorship deals, which you can include in all your podcast agreements with your sponsors, so you have an outline of everything you need, like a sponsorship memorandum of understanding.
After learning about all the essential terms for your podcast sponsorship agreement, you will be ensured of a great relationship with the sponsor while legally protecting your business and getting the most out of your sponsorship.
This post is all about the essential terms every podcast sponsorship agreement needs for podcasters.
Essential Podcast Sponsorship Agreement
Agreement between sponsor and organizer
Before we get into the details of the podcast sponsorship agreement, let’s get into what a podcast sponsorship agreement is compared to other types of sponsorship agreements.
A podcast sponsorship agreement is kind of like an event sponsorship agreement. The sponsor pays the podcaster to
A sponsorship agreement is comparable to the athlete sponsorship agreement template, and many lawyers take away certain terms from such agreements for podcast agreements. The athlete sponsorship agreement template has been around for quite a long time, whereas the podcast sponsorship agreement, like other podcast agreements, is relatively new because podcasts have not been around as long.
But, there are significant differences. How the relationship works, how sponsored products are promoted, and the pricing and payment methods are very different.
YouTube sponsorships have been around for longer, but even those sponsorships differ. If your podcast is on both platforms, we’ll get into how that works too.
Therefore, you can’t just use any agreement between sponsor and organizer.
If you have not read about the main terms every podcast sponsorship agreement needs for you and the sponsor, read this blog post first on the 5 Crucial Terms Every Podcast Sponsorship Contract Should Have.
In this blog post, I have created a sponsorship memorandum of understanding of sorts to give you, as the podcaster, the key terms you need in your podcast sponsorship agreement.
Sponsorship memorandum of understanding
1. IP Ownership
As the podcaster, you want to have complete control of your podcast, so you want to have all intellectual property (IP) rights to your podcast. Sometimes, a brand may wish to the IP rights to just that sponsored part of your episode so they can use it for their own platforms or advertising. Do not allow that! Give them a license instead, so they can use it for what they want to use it for, but do not give everything away for free.
You should get paid for that and have complete control of what they use your voice for!
2. Pricing structure: what are you paid for?
That brings me to the following essential term you should have in your podcast sponsorship agreement; money!
There is no standard price for podcast sponsorships, which is a good thing, in my opinion. Just the number of listeners does not matter anymore. Other factors matter, too, like your conversion rate, the loyalty of your audience and your other platforms.
You could base your rate on a percentage of your listeners, but there are more ways to earn money!
Combine your base rate with a rate based on the number of sales made with your promo code whenever possible. That is another revenue stream!
If you are a little more advanced, have more sponsors and have the data to show for it, you could negotiate an additional success fee if you are confident you will hit a certain number of sales with your promo code. It’s like a bonus for how well you perform.
Suppose the brand wants to use your voice for advertising purposes. Great! That’s more money in your pocket, but that is why it’s crucial that you own the intellectual property rights, so you can get the brand to pay you for so-called “usage rights”. You can then have the brand pay you a price based on how long they use your voice, so [x] amount for each month they use your sponsored skit for advertising.
What if you have a massive following on YouTube and are also broadcasting your podcast on your YouTube channel? In that case, you could set an additional price for the sponsored part to be included in your YouTube video (not just your podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify).
These are just some examples, but there are many more creative ways to get paid and increase your income!
3. Getting paid
Now that you have a price, you must ensure you get paid. This is not discussed much, but it’s crucial that you get the payment structure right.
At least be very specific about when you get paid. Preferably you get your fixed fee before the podcast episode airs, but if it’s afterwards, how many days after the episode? If you have agreed to usage rights, does the brand have to pay you before each month or within [x] number of days after that? If you get a commission based on sales, do you get paid within [x] number of days after each calendar month or each calendar quarter?
Also, think about by which payment method you get paid. And who carries the transaction costs? Do not underestimate how high the transaction fees can be for certain payment methods.
Some companies, not just small ones, maybe especially the large ones, take a long time to pay someone. You could include a late payment fee to give them an extra nudge. It costs you time, and thus, money, to chase someone for the payment you agreed to, so you should be compensated for that too.
Now, you can be assured that you get actually get paid what you deserve!
4. Limitation of exclusivity
More often than not, a brand will want an exclusivity provision in the podcast sponsorship agreement. That’s fine, but you don’t want the exclusivity provision to be too broad. You must be very specific and ensure the exclusivity only covers the necessary. Otherwise, you may lose money because your hands are tied, and you can’t get any sponsorship deals.
Here’s an example. Let’s say you have a podcast on self-care and beauty. A makeup brand wants to sponsor you to promote its newest lip gloss on your podcast. In that case, you don’t want the exclusivity to apply to the entire beauty industry because that would include skin care products, fragrances, and hair products, like shampoos, but also appliances, like hair dryers and brushes.
That would mean you would be chained to this one sponsor, and you can not work with any other brand in the beauty industry when beauty is all you talk about! Do you see how you could miss so many sponsorship opportunities and lose money just an exclusivity clause that is a little too broad?
The exclusivity should only cover businesses that sell the same products that you are paid to promote. It’s that simple.
You should also clearly state the term of the exclusivity clause. For what period does the exclusivity provision apply? At least for the duration of the agreement, but what about after that? Two weeks or maybe even a month may be reasonable, but you don’t want the exclusivity to last for an entire year after you are not even paid by this brand anymore.
Also, ensure that the exclusivity only applies to sponsorships and not to ads if you also run ads on your podcast!
5. Protection against claims from listeners
Even though you are promoting a product or service, you should not be responsible for a product or service that is not yours.
However, because listeners of your show may trust you and whatever you say about a product (even if they are not your words), listeners may make claims against you if they incurred damages or the product is simply not what they expected it to be.
Even if those claims are unfounded, you will still have to invest time and money to fight those claims, and you should be fully compensated for that. Also, you want to ensure that the brand takes full responsibility and handles such claims from the get-go.
That is precisely why you need an indemnity in your podcast sponsorship agreement based on which the brand “indemnifies and holds you harmless” against any claims you receive from listeners or anyone else. In other words, the brand will take it over from you and compensate for any costs you have had to make in relation to such claims.
Is the brand afraid you might say something about their product that is incorrect? Then have them approve your script before you air it on your podcast. They can’t leave you responsible for any claims if they approve of what you say about their product.
That way, you are fully ensured of not only making the most money you can from your sponsorship deal but also don’t lose any of your hard-earned money!
If you are looking for a podcast sponsorship agreement template that includes all the essentials I just discussed, I sell a podcast sponsorship agreement on this page of my contract shop!
If you want to learn more about the crucial terms every podcast sponsorship agreement needs (for both you and the sponsor), then read this blog post on the 5 Crucial Terms Every Podcast Sponsorship Contract Should Have.
YouTube Sponsorship Contract Template
I touched upon the added element of YouTube and how that affects your podcast sponsorship agreement. If you also have a YouTube channel in which you make YouTube videos besides your podcasting videos, you might also attract sponsors for those videos. In that case, you need a separate YouTube sponsorship agreement for your YouTube sponsorships.
I am selling a brand sponsorship agreement in my contract shop that can be used for YouTube sponsorship and also social media sponsorships.
Podcast Agreements
If you are a podcaster, a podcast sponsorship agreement is just one of the various podcast agreements you need. If you want to learn more about the other podcast agreements you need for your podcast, read this blog post on the 5 Must-Have Podcast Contracts Every Professional Podcaster Needs.
This post was all about the essential terms every podcaster needs in their podcast sponsorship agreement.
If you want to know what crucial terms a podcast sponsorship agreement must have for both you and the sponsor, read this blog post on the 5 Crucial Terms Every Podcast Sponsorship Contract Should Have.
You can learn more about the essential podcast agreements you need as a podcaster (including the podcast sponsorship agreement) in this blog post on the 5 Must-Have Podcast Contracts Every Professional Podcaster Needs.
You can get your legal podcast bundle (which includes each podcast sponsorship agreement template every podcaster needs) here!
You can get your podcast sponsorship agreement separately here!
