I'm going to advocate here for buying Canon refurbished. When I buy directly from Canon, I only buy refurbished, and everything comes indistinguishable from new with the exact same warranty and exact same qualification for CPS, etc. You can regularly find R6 II's (my recommendation for your needs) for $1699, and considering Canon treats this like an "as new" purchase, I don't think there's a better value anywhere else in the camera world.
To your specific needs, I would suggest mostly buying R6 II's, and maybe picking up one or two R5 II's if budget allows. The R6 II is a remarkably competent camera, and it irons out a lot of the quirks with the first gen R5/R6 cameras, e.g. the loose hotshoes. Moreover, the R6 II records to dual SD cards, so you wouldn't need to budget for any of the now insanely expensive CFExpress type B cards unless you picked up an R5 II.
Not for nothing, I also think this is the type of purchasing decision you can overthink to death. The R6 II is a truly phenomenal camera, one which most pros could happily shoot for the next decade and, if never exposed to any marketing material for the "next hot thing," never think twice about. More importantly, the money saved vs. the R1/R5II class of camera allows you to build out a serious fleet of incredible glass, which is where all the magic is anyway. Were it me, this is how I'd spend the $$.
nightnight wrote:
Moreover, the R6 II records to dual SD cards, so you wouldn't need to budget for any of the now insanely expensive CFExpress type B cards unless you picked up an R5 II.
We don't know if OP's organization has a RAW or jpeg based workflow. I'd assume jpeg at least for sports events. RAW has a more significant impact on the need for faster and higher capacity cards. With the R6II, SDXC V90 cards provide a definite speed benefit. But those cards, on a price per GB basis, are actually more expensive than CFe Type B used in the R5II, R3 and R1. And those cameras have fewer buffer depth constraints compared to the R6II.
Back in September I bought some Nextorage 256GB SDXC V90 cards and they were each more expensive than the single Nextorage 500GB CFe Type B card I also bought at the time. Nextorage's prices have really skyrocketed in the past few months but the CFe card remains less expensive at $420 than the 256GB SDXC at $490.
But if you don't need SDXC V90, then yes, V60 or even V30 are considerably less expensive.
