OVERVIEW
Sponsorships are one of your most valuable revenue, PR and marketing drivers.
Successful sponsor acquisition is less about who you know — and more about what you know, what your festival has done, and how you present the opportunity.
We've designed and delivered hundreds of brand partnerships — the kind that raise your profile, drive revenue, elevate the fan experience, and boost visibility with top-tier sponsors seeking quality partnership opportunities.
If you want your festival to grow and last — this is where it starts.
DELIVERABLES
A proven sponsorship strategy that will help you target better, sell bigger, and retain longer.
- Sponsorship Goals
- Sales Strategy
- Brand Positioning
- Asset Inventorying
- Category Mapping
- Prospect Pipelining
- Sales Tool Development
- Sales Messaging and Process
- Proposal and Presentation Development
- Deal Structure: contracts, deliverables, renewals
- Bonus: Brand Relationships, Activation Playbook, Partner Recap Templates
…and more.
OUTCOMES
REVENUE
Secure more dollars, faster — from name brands who add significant value.
PR & MARKETING
Brands whose reach and respect elevate your festival's presence and prestige.
VALIDATION
Sign top-tier partners who expand your visibility in their category, leading to more sponsors in their industry.
SCALABILITY
A repeatable system you can learn and leverage in perpetuity to renew existing sponsors and reach new ones.
A Selection of Clients We’ve Helped Grow
JK MCKNIGHT
Your point of contact — and the experience leader behind AOI.
JK McKnight has spent 25 years in festival development. He founded Forecastle Festival, growing it from 50 people into a 75,000-person destination event and one of America's most critically acclaimed festivals. He later worked with AC Entertainment (Bonnaroo, Big Ears, High Water, Railbird and more). Today, he helps founders design, produce, and grow world-class festivals through proven strategy, specialized expertise, and decades of firsthand experience.
Read JK's full bioFrequently Asked Questions
A proven, end-to-end sponsorship system: sponsorship goals, sales strategy, brand positioning, asset inventorying, category mapping, prospect pipelining, sales tool development, sales messaging and process, proposal and presentation development, and deal structure covering contracts, deliverables, and renewals. It's built to help you target better, sell bigger, and retain longer.
6-8 weeks from kickoff.
We start by defining your sponsorship goals and mapping your assets to the right brand categories. From there we build your prospect pipeline, develop your sales tools and messaging, and craft the proposals and presentations that turn conversations into signed partners — a repeatable process you can run in perpetuity.
Beyond the core strategy, engagements can include bonus deliverables like brand relationship introductions, an activation playbook, and partner recap templates. We customize the extras to your festival so you're equipped to acquire new sponsors and grow their annual investment.
25+ years in sponsorship development and millions of dollars in sponsorship closed for festivals across the country. We've personally designed and delivered hundreds of brand partnerships, and we hand you a proprietary model, system, and process — customized to your festival — that drives Revenue, PR & Marketing, Validation, and Scalability.
Take your festival to the next stage
Schedule a free discovery call with our team. We’ll assess where you are, where you want to go, and exactly how we can help you get there.