How much do event marketing & sponsorships really cost during cultural tent poles?

Now that many of us are in planning mode for 2020, it's time to have a heart to heart, especially to publicists.

You have no idea how much stuff costs.

I had a publicist call me last week to help her find something for a brand to be a part of at the Sundance Film Festival. She was adamant that she didn't want to spend more than $5,000. I told her I couldn't think of a credible event producer who does anything for a brand that low and that she is wasting everyone's time. This is on the heels of another publicist who wanted to do a month-long pop-up shop on Fifth Avenue in New York City with a budget of $20,000. Another publicist wanted a custom-built vehicle and a national brand tour for $30,000. Two Canadian publicists told me their clients don't sponsor anything for more than $5,000 during TIFF.

The problem with this bargain basement attitude is that it promotes poor quality events and experiences. If it looks cheap and not well thought out, what message are you sending to consumers or your press guests?

So, to save everyone's headaches, here are the costs of activating a brand or sponsoring an existing platform event (i.e. events with multiple sponsors) during very popular cultural events. I've also included costs of custom-built pop-up experiences and venues.

Please note almost everything on this list isn't about officially sponsoring the festival/show. By all means, officially sponsor these festivals and awards shows, and then use these budgets to guide your spend on the onsite activation.

Also, I know that everyone has a specific experience where you got a brand in an event for free or a major discount. I negotiate as well when I'm on retainer to find events for a client. But I also recognize that if my brand doesn't provide enough cash budget to defray the costs of the event, the event will have to get more sponsors. This dilutes my sponsor's effectiveness onsite because now I have more brands vying for the attention of attendees and press. Or worse, the event gets canceled because it is unprofitable.

Congratulations, you played yourself

DJ Khalid

Golden Globes

Parties:

Pre-parties start on Thursday and last through Saturday. The ones I like are both on Saturday: BAFTA Tea Party and the evening event Art of Elysium's Heaven. For after parties, not all will bring in outside sponsors, but some do. All after-parties are located inside the Hilton.

Sponsorship fees

Pre-event: $25,000 - $250,000

After-party: $75,000 - $300,000*

Note: Generally, the higher costs in this article include the logo on the red carpet step and repeat, plenty of invites, and if there is a magazine/website involved, some advertising. The lower level sponsorship might only get an onsite presence and a few attendees.

Sundance Film Festival

Pop-up Venues

The benefit of a pop-up venue is that you own it, program it, design it and you are responsible for everything. Lots of choices here depending on the use. If you are an official sponsor, you might be using the venue as a public house where it will be hosting hundreds of people per hour. If you are a news outlet like a magazine, you might be only using the venue during the daytime for celebrity interviews.

The size of the venue matters (and the number toilets- seriously) as well as how long the rental will be. Generally, most ambush marketers choose to activate during the first weekend of the festival. This is because much of the press attend only the first weekend and that Park City liquor licenses only last for 3 days. If you are an official sponsor, you might have to rent for a longer period like 5 or all 10 days. Oh, Main Street in Park City is the only place you want to activate.

Cheapest I've seen a pop-up lounge produced for on Main Street: $150,000 (and boy did it look like it)

Average pop-up media lounge on Main Street: $250,000 - $500,000

Pop-up venue that is open to the public or hosting VIP parties $350,000 - $1,000,000. My last two pop-up lounges had budgets of $350,000 and $500,000 respectively.

Park City licenses, fees, inspections, and renderings: $7,000

Cost of venues on Main Street for the first weekend: $35,000 - $125,000

Email me for recommendations of experiential agencies you should be working with who have the Sundance Film Festival experience. Also, I'm the main person you should be talking to about sponsoring existing lounges and events.

Media Lounges

A media lounge is where an outlet sets up to interview the film casts and filmmakers about their Sundance projects. Generally, these events are funded by advertising buys with the magazine or website. Last year, an entertainment news website was asking for $100,000 per brand (however, they did offer me a $50,000 sponsorship without any advertising buy- but it felt like they were going to abuse the client by severely limiting their actions inside the lounge). One of the top 25 websites in the world wants $200,000 per brand. The Hollywood trade magazines were asking for $100,000 - $200,000 per brand. The benefits of sponsoring a media lounge are that you have guaranteed ROI on day one. Any pictures or press you pitch on top of the ad buy is the icing on the cake. Oh, and they kill it on celebrities.

Why so expensive? See the cost of pop-up lounges above. Also, they don't want too many brands in the lounge. That's a good thing as the talent has very limited time, so you don't want to be competing against 5 to 10 other brands for attention. One media lounge which got all the same celebrities but had the bonus of being the home base for a major news wire, costs between $25,000 to $250,000. The top sponsorship gets title rights to the venue, so all the pictures that are pushed out on the wire service have your brand right there. They average between 750 million to 1.2 billion media impressions each year before they pitch one picture.

Gifting Lounges

While these have fallen out of favor, you can generally get a gifting lounge sponsorship for $10,000 - $30,000 not including the build-out of your section of the venue. I've seen some venues allowing $5,000 fees, but to be honest -- they were poorly produced and didn't attract decent celebrities.

Parties

I've seen party sponsorship fees all over the place.

Cost to produce a party with an open bar is at least $150+/pp plus costs of security ($150/3 hours) in a restaurant on Main Street for two and a half hours. You must have one security guard for every 50 people. Some sponsored venues will let you rent out their space as long as you use their sponsors.

Cost to sponsor a single party $1,000 - $50,000 (presented by)- the range is depending on whom the party attracts.

Event series: there are some good producers who do a series of film premieres and cast dinners for the films at the Sundance Film Festival. You buy-in as a package and get the benefit of multiple celebrity events, press outreach built-in, full production, and pictures each evening.

Cost to sponsor a party series: $25,000 - $125,000 (title)

Housing

Hotel Rooms: $171 (far away like in Heber Utah) - $1,200 (a luxury room in Deer Valley) per night

Condos: $800 - 1,300 per night with a 5-night minimum

Houses: $7,000 - $20,000 for a 5-night minimum

Superbowl

Parties

The cost to produce a party can range on these two factors: how many people will attend and what talent is performing. At the Superbowl, your event needs a real headline performer to attract any attention. The parties I've been involved with had capacities from 3,000 - 5,000 people with an open bar. The costs were paid through sponsors, VIP table sales, and ticket sales.

Cost to produce a quality party: $300,00 to 500,000+

Cost of the headline performer: $250,000 - $1,000,000+

Party sponsorship:

$250,000 - $1,000,000 for the top parties. However, I had a major bank sponsor an afternoon event with athletes for $100,000. I've seen some brands like flat waters or energy drinks get in for $5,000 to $10,000. Please note, those weren't A-List parties.

New York Fashion Week (February and September)

New York Fashion Week, held in February and September of each year, is a semi-annual series of events (generally lasting 7–9 days) when international fashion collections are shown to buyers, the press and the public. It is one of four major fashion weeks in the world, collectively known as the "Big 4," along with those in Paris, London, and Milan.

The big change in the past few years was IMG is no longer running the official New York Fashion Week. It is now decentralized thus costs have lowered.

My only pricing reference is the Style360 fashion show series which ranges from $15,000 - $250,000. I've also had brands in pop-up two-day beauty bars that provided complimentary beauty services like touch-ups and blowouts which were from $10,000 to $35,000.

Oscars

Gifting Lounges

I think you can easily get a gifting lounge for between $5,000 to $50,000. with $10,000 - $20,000 being the sweet spot. You would have to do your own build-out and expect 20 or so other brands in the lounge. You might even need to buy your wire service photographs as an additional fee.

But a word of warning, many of these lounges can be a crapshoot on talent and press wrangling. You will see plenty of TV stars, reality show stars, big YouTubers and a lot of people you'll have seen in a movie but can't quite place. However, you will probably never see a nominated celebrity. In fact, I brought my nominated friends in categories like Editing and Short Film Animation, and they were treated like gods because none of the lounges had a nominee walk in before. If this is what you want to do, contact me and I'm happy to have a frank off-the-record conversation about each lounge.

Parties

Oscar parties can range in price depending on when during the week they happen. Of course, the after-parties are the most expensive. But this is Oscar week, so there are parties happening almost every day till the big night.

Weekday party:

$10,000 - $150,000 (possibly more if a magazine is involved). I got one of my clients a $50,000 sponsorship for $25,000 last year to be a part of a studio event. Yes, go through me and I'll negotiate with your budget in mind.

After-parties:

$250,000 - $1,000,000 (for the top events); $50,000 - $200,000 (for a studio party or other after-party) Why so expensive? Some parties cost up to a million dollars to produce.

My advice is to stick with what you have heard about. There are always a few events that never get any good talent. Those events will draw all the talent and press that couldn't get into a good event.

Also, don't ignore viewing parties (these are parties where industry people and celebrity talent who are not attending the actual Oscars will watch the show before going to the after-party). Some events, like the Elton John Viewing Party, add an after-party element as well.

SXSW

Never been, but I have seen sponsorship proposals from $1,000 to $100,000. I find most events at SXSW have brand vomit by that I mean too many sponsors. You get lost in an array of logos at the bottom of an invite that no one remembers.

I know that an experiential activation of a client did cost over $1,000,000. Booth space rental with SXSW appears to be (depending on size) about $14,000 for a pretty good size one, so expect to pay $50,000 for booth build-out and travel on top of the fee.

Hotel rooms are expensive. Since this isn’t my expertise, please comment below on everything you know about event production and sponsorship at SXSW. I want to learn from you.

Coachella

All these are 100% unofficial off-site events that just happen at the same weekends as that desert music festival. I know AEG/Goldenvoice is litigious as hell so for god sakes don't use the word Coachella on any of your sponsorship decks or press releases unless you an official sponsor.

Here are some of the costs I remember from the past 10 years of working with brands at the same time as that random music festival in the desert.

A big house to throw a party in Bermuda Dunes: $75,000 to $125,000 for the first weekend; much lower for weekend 2. Oh, almost all the cool people and press go weekend one.

Sponsorship of Neon Carnival, the biggest (7,000 attendees), most coveted invite, and probably most celebrity attended the unofficial event: $50,000 - $250,000. The only thing that matters is putting your name on a ride, so it appears in millions of Instagram posts.

Sponsorship of a daytime event series that might have some gifting: $10,000 - $100,000 (however, I think $35,000 is a fair price without a magazine or website attached). $50,000 and above if you have a media outlet attached with guaranteed coverage or advertising.

For the last two years, Revolve has been doing a bang-up job with their Revolve Fest activation.

Tribeca Film Festival

The only events I've been involved with have been the premiere parties as they do have newsworthy films with celebrity stars. There is at least one event producer doing a series of film premieres. Also, it's NYC, so there is always plenty of talent and press looking for something to do.

Offsite film premiere party sponsorship: $5,000 - $50,000

Film premiere party series sponsorship: $15,000 - $100,000

Cannes Film Festival

I'm a huge fan of this film festival. It's classy with a bit of sleaze hidden underneath. I can't think of a better place to market to wealthy people and the film industry. However, I just don't have enough experience other than selling some sponsorship a few years ago in the $10,000 - $20,000 range. All these were very last minute and mostly dealt with hospitality. Still looking for another wealthy group to bring me to Cannes with a robust budget for me to get them into parties. Any takers?

For something that targets all around attendees and has some celebrity talent, the American Pavilion is a good place to start. You are looking at sponsorship fees in $50,000 - $200,000.

The only gifting suite I can recommend is the DPA Suite, which runs from $15,000 - $25,000+ per brand.

There are media lounges from outlets like Variety and Deadline. Expect these sponsorship fees to be in the $100,000 - $200,000 range with guaranteed ROI via a run of website advertising. You'll get great celebrity attendees.

Custom lounges: I did a budget for a custom lounge in a top hotel a few years ago and the costs were about $250,000 for a well-produced 4-day VIP lounge.

Amfar Gala is probably the best off-site event to sponsor. My best guess is that you are looking at a minimum of $500,000 per brand to sponsor. I can't see them selling it for less than that considering the cost of buying a table. That event got 16,729,175,817 media impressions this year and 2,044,821,985 social media impressions even without some big star power.

Vidcon

If you work with a brand or consumer product that has any appeal to Gen Z or Millennials, Vidcon is where you need to be in July. If you are a brand that is investing heavily in influencer marketing or want to, Vidcon is where you need to be for business. 30,000 screaming fans onsite. A thousand or so of the top influential Youtubers, TikTok, and Instagram personalities. Hundreds of business executives.

Sponsorship of the convention: $20,000 - $250,000

Booth space cost: $10,000 - $50,000

Proper budget to do a featured creator VIP lounge in the secure hotel: $150,000 plus $20,000 to Vidcon with hosted happy hours

Proper budget to build-out a booth: At least $250,000 and make it amazing. Next to E3, this convention has some of the most unique experiential booths around.

Offsite party sponsorship in the Rise9 party or Studio71: $10,000 to $100,000. These are great for meeting famous and not so famous influencers.

Comic-Con

While I know many brands ignore Comic-Con because they think it's a bunch of 12-year-old nerdy kids, that couldn't be further from the truth. It's a bunch of nerdy 28-year-old adults with jobs who love pop-culture. Plenty of mainstream consumer brands have also found success at Comic-Con like Schick, Geico, Pizza Hut, Sweetarts, Dell and even Hint Water.

This event is like the Sundance Film Festival in that you have a ton of celebrities, over 3500 press outlets covering (over 12 billion media impressions), and a bunch of film/TV industry executives crammed into the Gaslamp district of San Diego.

You have four choices in activating: large-scale custom experiential activation, media lounge sponsorship, VIP party sponsorship, and custom street teams.

Here are the costs:

Comic-Con cast interview lounge sponsorship at the Hard Rock or a Yacht: $50,000 - $200,000

Entertainment Weekly Party (the best invite-only event of the weekend) $100,000 to $200,000 plus activation costs

Wired Cafe (the best daytime event) $50,000 - $250,000

Sponsoring the convention: Usually, you are just taking on a cost from Comic-Con. For example, covering the costs of the shuttle buses to the hotels, you get to wrap the buses at your cost. Please note that Comic-Con is not motivated by dollars. I've seen trade deals for water brands, as long as they provided 19 pallets of water.

Custom experiential brand activation off site: $500,000 - $1.2 million+ Wow factor and fun are very important.

Booth cost inside the convention center: Even though booth space is not available and they have a 5-year waiting list, when you do get a booth, the rental fees aren't that much.

Toronto Film Festival

Since moving the festival to the Bell Lightbox, almost all the unofficial events and lounges happen within a few blocks of that venue.

There are gifting lounges with various levels of costs, but none I can really see wrangling the good talent.

Media lounges would be a better choice with Variety being the top one for talent with sponsorship from $75,000 to $200,000.

For film premiere parties, I know of a series of events (4 - 6 parties) that have pricing from $25,000 - $125,000. This series has done events for TIFF films like Catch Me If You Can, Gravity and Drive.

Emmy Awards

Lots of event choices this weekend and all pretty good in terms of delivering.

Backstage at the Emmy Awards gifting lounge: $25,000 - $35,000+. The difference in pricing is the size of your footprint and how many people are allowed to be onsite. No more than two. I can get your brand access to this lounge.

The pre-show event I'm working on, the Television Advocacy Awards has sponsorship from $25,000 to $100,000. We have cast members from Riverdale, Big Bang Theory and Westworld getting awards and attending. We have the added benefit of a major entertainment magazine media partner that will publish event recaps that include our sponsors.

Parties: I haven't seen a decent post-show Emmy party sponsorship deck that was less than $100,000 per brand.

Off-site Gifting lounges: I would say $5,000 - $30,000 per brand is the range that you can sponsor these but don't expect nominees or presenters.

Other events that have off-site sponsorship opportunities available include Grammy Awards, Teen Choice Awards, MTV VMAs, MTV Movie Awards, ESPY Awards, NBA All-Star game events and others that I'm missing here and might add later.

What do you think? What other events should I add?

Disagree? Make me change my mind!

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