The music industry today leans on brand sponsorship more than it cares to acknowledge. Festivals, tours, and even media coverage are sustained by it. In India, it’s a widely acknowledged truth that ticket sales can’t support large events, and public arts funding is scarce. That means brand partnerships are the backbone of the live music economy, but their role has shifted. Ten years ago, a sponsorship usually meant a logo on a stage or a modest booth. Now, the same budgets are expected to deliver fully branded arenas, immersive activations, influencer lounges, and months of social-first content. The demands have grown, the money hasn’t, and that imbalance is inflating a bubble.
This isn’t just a perception problem—it’s something people inside the industry are openly acknowledging, if not loudly. At the Sponsorship: Brands vs. Festivals View panel during the PIN Music Conference 2024, moderated by musician Ida Prester, speakers including Bojan Kochovski (McCann Skopje), Dušan Kuzmanov (Dev9t), Vladimir Rukavina (LENT Festival), and Evelyn Sieber (Reeperbahn Festival) unpacked the growing imbalance. One speaker put it bluntly: “At the end of the day, it’s the same amount of money that goes into our pocket. But it’s the workforce. You need more people.” The budgets haven’t scaled, but the demands on organizers have, forcing them to overdeliver, often at the expense of financial sustainability.
That’s not to say sponsorship can’t be constructive. At its best, the right partner can help elevate the culture itself: Bacardi’s decade-long tie-in with NH7 Weekender shaped the country’s most recognizable festival identity (until 2024), Johnnie Walker’s lounges at Lollapalooza India became genuine gathering points rather than just marketing sites, and globally, Absolut’s multi-year investment in Tomorrowland has enabled large-scale art installations and sustainability projects that would have been impossible otherwise. As some panelists at the PIN Music Conference 2024 noted, the healthier sponsorships are the ones that take a longer view—multi-year deals or investments that align with the artistic vision of a festival—rather than one-off asks for quick visibility. It’s these longer partnerships that allow organizers to build stability instead of scrambling year after year.
In India, the shift is clear: the long-running Bacardi NH7 Weekender has shed its title sponsor, with The House of McDowell’s Soda stepping in from 2024 after Bacardi ended its decade-long run. Sunburn, once touted as Asia’s answer to Tomorrowland, is now stitched together with liquor, telecom, and lifestyle tie-ins. Lollapalooza India’s 2023 debut leaned heavily on brand presence, from Nexa lounges to Levi’s zones, where activations often rivalled the lineup in visibility. Meanwhile, Bacardi has gone further, pouring nearly 50 per cent of its Indian marketing budget into experiential activations, effectively producing cultural events rather than just attaching its name to them. AB InBev India has started building its own festivals, moving beyond sponsorship to ownership in a bet to prove that brands can replace promoters in creating live experiences.
Globally, the same story is playing out. At When We Were Young 2025 in Las Vegas, 7-Eleven wasn’t just a sponsor; it became the festival’s co-headliner, securing naming rights and flooding the site with branded zones, giveaways, and themed hangouts. At Coachella, beauty and fashion brands like Guess, Rhode, and Sol de Janeiro have built installations and influencer compounds that function as marketing sets more than cultural spaces. At the end of the day, sponsorship has moved beyond brand visibility and become more about brand immersion. But the cost of building that immersion is falling squarely on festivals and promoters, without a matching rise in what they’re paid. One counterexample often cited is Heineken’s long-term relationship with Primavera Sound in Spain, a sponsorship that has not only underwritten costs but also invested in stages and sustainability programs, showing how alignment can create credibility instead of clutter.
The financials bear this out. Sponsorships already accounted for 60–70 per cent of Indian festival revenues in the early 2010s, and while recent industry reports suggest ticketing and other revenue streams have grown, sponsorship remains the dominant lifeline. What has changed, however, is the relative value of that money. Brands are indeed spending more than they did a decade ago, but the inflation of deliverables—from fully branded arenas to months of digital content—means a crore today buys far less than it once did. In other words, sponsorship fees have grown, but expectations have grown faster, leaving festivals squeezed despite larger nominal spends.
In the same period, production costs, artist fees, and audience expectations have skyrocketed. In the UK, nearly 40 festivals were canceled in 2025 alone, citing rising costs and stagnant sponsorship inflows. The Guardian noted that even established festivals are buckling under “fewer headline acts and rising costs.” India faces the same pressures, though the fallout is quieter. Smaller operators rarely issue formal cancellation notes—they simply disappear, unable to satisfy brand expectations on flat budgets. One of the few to speak openly was Alboe By The Beach, which stated “rising costs” as the reason for shutting down.
Meanwhile, sponsors themselves are consolidating power. According to a WSJ report, Live Nation’s adjusted operating income from sponsorships was $764 million for the fiscal year 2024, up 13 per cent from 2023’s $675.1 million and more than three times the $207.7 million it made in 2014. The money is there globally, but the pressure falls disproportionately on smaller and mid-tier festivals, especially in markets like India, where multinational sponsors dictate terms.
For artists, the consequences are equally fraught. Stages are not only programmed around fan demand but also around sponsor preference. The “wrong” aesthetic or a politically risky image can take an artist out of the running even before their music is considered. Editorial platforms, too, are complicit, commissioning branded IPs more readily than independent criticism, because survival depends on advertiser budgets. And yet, brand-funded platforms have, at times, provided rare space for risk-taking. Spotify’s Radar program and Coke Studio’s regional showcases illustrate how sponsorship can create opportunities that wouldn’t exist otherwise when the investment is tied directly to artist development.
The fragility of this system has already been exposed. When Red Bull pulled the plug on its global Music Academy and Red Bull Radio in 2019, it left hundreds of artists stranded and erased one of the most ambitious music development platforms overnight. Converse ended its Rubber Tracks program, which had offered free studio time to independent musicians. Even Bacardi has fluctuated in its Indian investments from year to year, leaving promoters in the lurch when budgets were redirected elsewhere.
And yet, silence reigns. Artists don’t want to risk losing deals, promoters can’t afford to alienate sponsors, and media outlets rely on advertiser support. Everyone plays along, hoping the illusion of stability will hold. But bubbles don’t last. India’s music tourism market is projected to grow from $2.46 billion in 2024 to $13.36 billion by 2033, but that growth is built on an unstable foundation: brand infrastructure rather than independent sustainability. When brands inevitably pivot—to gaming, esports, or influencer culture—the scaffolding collapses.
The uncomfortable truth is that festivals and promoters often give in to brand demands simply because they have no choice. Artists and media are complicit because survival depends on it. But the longer we pretend this is stability, the harder the crash will be when the bubble bursts. And when it does, it won’t just be logos that disappear. It will be stages, careers, and cultural spaces that may never return.
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