Branding, sponsorship and the music festival

This chapter explores the relationship between outdoor rock and pop music festivals and the sponsorship of commercial brands. Drawing on the UK market, it discusses the increasing importance of sponsorship deals to many festival organisers and defines, historicises and explores various forms of sponsorship activity in terms of leveraging and activation. Three main strategies are then suggested through which festival organisers deal (or not) with commercial sponsors. It also draws on the notion of the ‘countercultural carnivalesque’ to examine why sponsorship and branding at outdoor rock and pop music festivals may be viewed with suspicion by some festival organisers, commentators and audiences, and then draws briefly on postmodern arguments to help understand why sponsorship deals have become accepted by other types of audience.