See how we helped Carnegie Hall negotiate sponsorship fees with confidence during the economic downturn and beyond.
Built in 1891, Carnegie Hall is one of the preeminent concert venues in the U.S., annually hosting more than 200 of its own events, more than 400 rental events, and approximately 700,000 attendees—including extensive education and community programs through Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.
Carnegie Hall had worked with IEG from time to time over the years, attending IEG’s Annual Conference and sponsorship webinars, subscribing to IEG Sponsorship Report, etc. In 2008, Carnegie Hall was going through significant changes in its programming and turned to IEG to help verify how much it was charging companies for various sponsorship opportunities.
IEG valued several of Carnegie Hall’s sponsorship opportunities, including season and event sponsor packages. IEG accounted for all the tangible assets, including ID in Carnegie Hall’s media buy, on-site visibility, sampling/display and VIP hospitality/tickets. IEG also reviewed and accounted for Carnegie Hall’s intangible benefits, such as prestige, recognizability, ability to activate, sponsor clutter and media coverage potential.
Results: IEG’s valuations provided Carnegie Hall with a better understanding of its value and helped put metrics and benchmarks behind its pricing. This was especially helpful throughout the economic downturn, as the valuations gave Carnegie Hall confidence when speaking with sponsor prospects, as well as with current sponsors about renewals and price increases, even in cases where Carnegie Hall was not seeking the full fair market value.
Although Carnegie Hall primarily has used the valuations internally, it recently began to share them with select prospects to help demonstrate Carnegie Hall’s commitment to sponsorship and to provide back-up for package pricing.
Carnegie Hall was most surprised by how helpful the process of working with IEG turned out to be. The information-gathering process has informed conversations and processes within the organization, allowing the sponsorship team to more easily discuss sponsorship with internal colleagues in terms of value and to set expectations based on that value.