Car­la Par­ris

Last week I sug­gest­ed that in the at­tempt to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my, Car­ni­val should be looked at with fo­cused at­ten­tion on the abil­i­ty to sell broad­cast rights to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences in the di­as­po­ra and else­where in the world where T&T's in­dige­nous prod­ucts are used and val­ued.

The ma­jor­i­ty of re­spons­es to this per­spec­tive on Face­book, email and oth­er­wise agreed that we should seek to sell rights to cer­tain events and to al­so sell doc­u­men­taries, film and TV pack­ages of the best of Car­ni­val. They have al­so sug­gest­ed that, at this mo­ment, at­ten­tion needs to be paid to pro­duc­ing mar­ket ready prod­ucts that can be cap­tured on film.

This week I wish to fo­cus on the fact that though all events are not suit­able for broad­cast pur­pos­es and while this may not be the aim of an event pro­duc­er, if the lev­el of spon­sor­ship for Car­ni­val events con­tin­ues to drop at the rate that it has this year, there may come a time when we do not have the pletho­ra of events to choose from, ei­ther to broad­cast or to sim­ply en­joy as con­sumers of the prod­uct. Event pro­duc­ers there­fore need to fo­cus at­ten­tion on the val­ue of the spon­sor­ship rights that they of­fer to prospec­tive spon­sors and in­vestors of events.

Re­ports com­ing in from event pro­duc­ers this year are grim. The in­jec­tion of spon­sor­ship cap­i­tal from cor­po­rate, gov­ern­men­tal and oth­er spon­sors has been re­duced, no doubt due to the cur­rent pro­jec­tions for the econ­o­my. As such, some pro­mot­ers have cho­sen not to pro­duce some of their events and some have cho­sen to can­cel out­right mid­way through the pro­duc­tion cy­cle due to lack of spon­sor­ship funds.

The im­pact of this is felt, not on­ly on the in­come of the event pro­duc­er, but in re­duced job op­por­tu­ni­ties for ser­vice providers such as cater­ers, bar staff and com­pa­nies that pro­vide in­fra­struc­ture such as stage erec­tion, light­ing, decor and oth­er as­pects of the pro­duc­tion.

Many of these jobs have been lost. I am of the view that af­ter this sea­son ends, event pro­duc­ers should re-group and fo­cus their en­er­gies on ways in which they can in­crease the lev­el of their of­fer­ings to re­tain and at­tract new spon­sors and new in­vestors in the years ahead.

Some­times it seems like we are a peo­ple stuck in yes­ter­day, re­sis­tant to the fact that our mar­ket is no longer as un­so­phis­ti­cat­ed as it used to be in years gone by. Just as the tastes of pa­trons at events have evolved and they now de­mand val­ue for mon­ey in the kinds of events they pa­tro­n­ise, so too have the needs of cor­po­rate spon­sors who are bom­bard­ed with spon­sor­ship re­quests year round. They want more val­ue for the spon­sor­ship cap­i­tal re­quest­ed.

What are some of the le­gal and busi­ness is­sues in­volved in spon­sor­ship deals?

Typ­i­cal­ly, event pro­mot­ers seek to en­tice spon­sors with the promise that, in ex­change for the in­jec­tion of cap­i­tal, cer­tain spon­sor­ship rights will ac­crue. Some of these rights are, for ex­am­ple, the right to erect brand­ed para­pher­na­lia, set up con­ces­sion stands, or even to cap­ture footage at events.

How­ev­er, in the age of so­cial me­dia where com­pa­nies now have ac­cess to brand pro­mo­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties on sites such as Face­book, Twit­ter and In­sta­gram, the promise of tra­di­tion­al brand­ing tools such as flags, ban­ner ads and con­ces­sions stand is no longer as at­trac­tive as it was be­fore.

Many spon­sors com­plain that they do not see a re­turn on their in­vest­ment in events be­cause pro­mot­ers fail to de­liv­er on the spon­sor­ship rights promised.

Some of the ways event pro­mot­ers can im­prove on the de­liv­ery of spon­sor­ship rights are by en­sur­ing spon­sors can do site vis­its well in ad­vance of the ac­tu­al day of the event so they have am­ple time to set up con­ces­sions stands and erect the brand­ed para­pher­na­lia they were promised.

Many spon­sor­ship deals has been lost be­cause spon­sors were un­able to erect their brand­ed ma­te­r­i­al in a way that suit­ed their needs and were de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ties to get val­ue from the mon­e­tary in­vest­ment. The loss of po­ten­tial in­come at con­ces­sion stands in­creas­es the num­ber of un­sat­is­fied spon­sors be­cause place­ment in an area of the event where few pa­trons will view the booth can se­vere­ly ham­per op­por­tu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate rev­enue if one is sell­ing food or oth­er brand­ed items.

Gone are the days when a spon­sor is sat­is­fied sim­ply to in­ject cap­i­tal in­to an event on the ba­sis of a pro­mot­er's friend­ship with the artistes who promise to per­form. More and more spon­sors are want proof of the artiste's oblig­a­tion to per­form at the event and re­quire copies of con­tracts en­tered in­to with per­form­ers.

Giv­en the fact that in many cas­es the spon­sor­ship mon­ey re­quest­ed varies de­pen­dent on the lev­el of artistes card­ed to per­form, the fact that a pro­mot­er can ac­tu­al­ly pro­duce a writ­ten and signed con­tract which demon­strates an artiste's con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion to the event can go a very long way in re­as­sur­ing a hes­i­tant spon­sor that he or she is en­ter­ing in­to an arrange­ment with a pro­mot­er who will ho­n­our com­mit­ments.

Clar­i­fy­ing the own­er­ship of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights in a spon­sor­ship arrange­ment is an­oth­er area where at­ten­tion needs to be giv­en well in ad­vance of the event date. Many times, due to the cap­i­tal in­vest­ed and the ef­forts spent on mar­ket­ing the event, ques­tions arise as to own­er­ship of ma­te­r­i­al cre­at­ed to pro­mote and pub­li­cise the event. Lack of clar­i­ty in these mat­ters to­geth­er with the cur­rent fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and the gen­er­al in­for­mal­i­ty with which these spon­sor­ship deals are pro­posed have caused many spon­sors to pull out of this year's events.

The onus is now on event pro­mot­ers, who are no doubt op­er­at­ing in an ex­treme­ly com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, to set them­selves apart by el­e­vat­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tion process and demon­strat­ing to prospec­tive spon­sors or in­vestors a lev­el of busi­ness so­phis­ti­ca­tion that is not cur­rent­ly the norm. The abil­i­ty to pro­vide doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence of re­la­tion­ships with artistes, ser­vice providers and oth­er par­ties whose in­volve­ment is re­quired to pro­duce the event is there­fore cru­cial.

Pro­mot­ers ought to al­so con­sid­er cre­ative new of­fer­ings apart from the tra­di­tion­al brand­ed para­pher­na­lia and per­haps of­fer sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta which pro­vides pro­ject­ed in­come, as well as mar­ket re­search on the au­di­ence and de­mo­graph­ics of the event so spon­sors can be more in­formed on the val­ue of in­vest­ing in one event over an­oth­er.

(Car­la Par­ris is an en­ter­tain­ment and sports at­tor­ney (LLB, LLM) with 12 years prac­ti­cal ex­pe­ri­ence in the cre­ative sec­tor with a client base span­ning the mu­sic, film, fash­ion, broad­cast and sport sec­tor. Apart from run­ning her law prac­tice, she has par­tic­i­pat­ed in more than 12 lo­cal and re­gion­al con­fer­ences in in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law and the cre­ative sec­tor and has ap­peared on lo­cal TV and ra­dio sta­tions dis­cussing the im­por­tance of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty law and cre­ative in­dus­try de­vel­op­ment.)