The Importance of Business Networking at Music Festivals.

The music festival ecosystem goes beyond just the live entertainment and provides great opportunities for related business networking. With so many key players attending a festival in a closed physical space the environment presents industry professionals opportunities to connect and collaborate with other parties.

Music festivals attract a number of key business professionals that can include promoters, sponsors, vendors and production companies, usually because they have an existing arrangement with the organising entity. Music festivals give businesses great opportunities to meet their peers and others in a relaxed and informal environment with deals, partnerships and collaboration agreements common. What deals and opportunities are there for networking between different businesses encountered on a festival site. 

Organisers and Staff. 
The festival organising team will likely consist of both permanent and temporary contract staff and the events can be a great environment for them to meet suppliers and peers to exchange ideas on operational and logistical best practices. Meeting suppliers of new technology can expose staff to innovative solutions that will make their jobs easier and more efficient for future events. For those new to the industry, perhaps working as a volunteer, they can get to meet and network with professionals who can connect them to career opportunities. 

Artists and Promoters. 
With hundreds of performance artists booked for a large music festival the backstage zone can provide excellent opportunities for artists to network with each other, exchange ideas and even agree on future collaboration projects. The promoters and artist management company representatives will have a strong presence at a festival where they not only meet peers but get to meet emerging talent and strike future deals. 

Sponsors. 
A sponsor's financial backing of a music festival is an essential element in any organiser’s revenue model and decision makers from sponsoring organisations can provide networking opportunities. The festival is a relaxed environment ideal for discussions on future sponsorship deals or for expanding sponsorship to other events they may organise. Festival staff get to meet sponsor staff and gain a better understanding of the sponsor’s needs related specifically for events. This allows festival staff to create more bespoke deals tailored to the sponsor’s requirements helping to secure future long term deals. 

Vendors. 
A large music festival will normally have hundreds of vendors on site to provide food and beverages, merchandise and welfare services to festival-goers. Vendor owners can network with organising staff to help secure favourable pitches at future or other events. In addition, vendors can network with each other to spread ideas and provide information on best practice, products and pricing. An experienced long running vendor can also provide essential information on getting pitches at other festivals along with which ones are worth applying for. In some cases, vendors may be able to develop partnerships or collaboration with each other like sharing staff or working together outside of the festival environment. Peer to peer networking can also lead vendors to exchange ideas and suggestions on the best suppliers to use for certain products. 

For festival organisers planning their next event using a software management platform like Festival Pro gives them all the functionality they need manage every aspect of their event logistics. The guys who are responsible for this software have been in the front line of event management for many years and the features are built from that experience and are performance artists themselves. The Festival Pro platform is easy to use and has comprehensive features with specific modules for managing artists, contractors, venues/stages, vendors, volunteers, sponsors, guestlists, ticketing, site planning, cashless payments and contactless ordering.

Image by Alexander Nadrilyanski via Pexels

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