Music Festival Sponsorship: Between Commerce and Carnival

This paper examines the cultural heritage of outdoor rock and pop music festivals in Britain since the mid-1960s, and relates it to developments in, and critiques of, corporate sponsorship in the contemporary music festival sector. Findings – Outdoor rock and pop music festivals were dominated by the ideologies of a ‘countercultural carnivalesque’ from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s. In the 1990s, changes in legislation began a process of professionalization, corporatization, and a reliance on brand sponsorships. Two broad trajectories are identified within the contemporary sector: one is strongly rooted in the heritage of the countercultural carnivalesque, while the other is more overtly commercial.