Hi,

I am trying to obtain market data on my industry for a venture capital
investor, and for our own research.

Essentially we have a corporate customer base and an event customer
base and i'm trying to give a sense of the size of those bases.

I have sofware which allows events to post there event (ie sunnyvale
art and wine festival, or bay to breakers race) into a database, then
prospective corporate sponsors (like AT&T wireless) can view the event
and decide if they want to sponsor the event.  Essentially an online
screening and filtering service for corporate marketing departments. 
See www.sponsorwise.com fyi.

my questions are several.

1. how many events are there in the USA annually.  This would include
most any event from street fairs, to charitable events to sporting
events.  It would be nice to have a breakdown according to the size
and type of event.  By size i mean number of attendees, by type i mean
sporting or charity or tradeshow or festival, etc.

2. how much money is spent annually on sponsorships, and a breakdown
on what is spent where.

3. what is a list of the major sponsors, and what is the total number
of prospective sponsors, ie the number of companies that engage in
some level of sponsorship.  perhaps the simple answer to this is how
many companies are there with market caps from 100M to 1B (or
employees of 1,000 to 10,000), and with market caps in range of 1M to
100M (or employees of 10 to 1,000).  Likely those companies do some
level of sponsorship and it will vary according to the size of the
company.

For example there are events such as the following, festivals, fairs,
concerts, art, music, tradeshows, sports, etc.  All of these involve
sponsorship and so would be part of our market.

so to summarize (i quote the vc directly):

- Total # of sponsored events in US annually 
- Breakdown of these by size (audience & sponsorship $ per event)-
perhaps $/event is an anecdotal or research average rationalized
against the amount of money spent on sponsorship annually
- # of sponsors in the US (would represent our total target customer
base, on the corporate side)


some places that have data are IEG, at www.sponsorship.com, Team
Marketing Report, and Events Media Associates, has a listing of 100K
events.

i will need reference links to the any 3rd party data that validates
answers you come up with.

i will tip big for the answers.  good luck.
and would appreciate a quick turn around.

i know this industry and the data is pretty fragmented but this will
give us a good start.



Thanks
russell

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Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 22 Mar 2004 11:35 PST

Hi Russell -

I've been working on your question since you posted it.  I've talked
to several people in the industry, and they pretty much all agree that
the number of ALL sponsored events in the industry is too liquid of a
number to ascertain.  It would make sense... the number simply has to
be astronomical -- everything from a flea market to a little league
baseball game can have sponsorships.  This number would have to be
categorically narrowed considerably in order to give you a "number of
events" figure of any relevance.

Notwithstanding, I have some data on what percentage of money is going
where, the total amount of money in sponsorships (estimated), as well
as big sponsors with estimates on how much they're giving.  There's
some other related statistics as well.

I also have a quote from someone on the number of sponsored B2B tradeshows.

Please let me know if any of this is of interest.

Thanks,

jbf

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Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 22 Mar 2004 15:12 PST

To paraphrase, I have data to answer your 2nd and 3rd question.  Would
you be interested in taking that as an answer?

---

Clarification of Question by russell1747-ga on 22 Mar 2004 16:48 PST

hi jbf,

that makes sense to me, a couple comments/requests.  
1. perhaps you can give some ballpark (no pun intended) estimates on
the number of events based on what you're seeing, ie number of cities
with populations over 1000 or number of public high schools in the
country, ie every high school probably has a little league or 2,
anyhow it will give me some ammo, and help to quantify things.
2. perhaps you can narrow down the number of events by confining to
larger events, ie 1000 or more attendees, something on that order, or
perhaps you decide on an alternative break point, like sporting events
or tradeshows.
3. if you are finding numbers for amount spent on sponsorship, we can
try to estimate an average, amount spent on sponsorship per event, ie
if total spent on sponsorship is $1B, and the average event
sponsorship is $100K, then that would => 10K events, very crude...  i
don't know if the numbers you're finding will work for that type of
calculation...

anything you can do will help, and answering the items #2 and #3 in
the original question will help.

sorry i could'nt be more specific, that's part of the problem :-) with
this industry, it's tough to convey all the data in a precise way.

thanks for all your hard work, i hope you took the weekend off :-).

best,
r

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Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 23 Mar 2004 11:31 PST

canary -

I will see what I can do.  

If it's not possible to get you estimates on numbers of sponsored
events, are you still interested in questions 2 and 3 to be answered?

---

Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 23 Mar 2004 11:31 PST

Oops!  I meant "russell" -- "canary" was the name of another user on
another question.  Sorry about that.

---

Clarification of Question by russell1747-ga on 23 Mar 2004 14:57 PST

as I said earlier the other info will help but the info we need help
on most is the number of events

as another suggestion perhaps you can figure out how many convention
centers there are

tx
r

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Request for Question Clarification by jbf777-ga on 23 Mar 2004 17:43 PST

Russell -

I can definitely find the number of convention centers in the US.

Also, I have a very estimated number on the number of high profile,
large sporting events that constitute the majority of all sponsorship
funds in the sport category (which is a large chunk of all high
profile sponsoring).  I have a number for festivals and tradeshows too
(though no sponsorship dollar estimates).

---

Clarification of Question by russell1747-ga on 23 Mar 2004 18:58 PST

great,
based on what you say the high end is covered, for larger events.
any luck on #1 on my mar 22 post, re population centers, and high schools.

i need to get this wrapped up asap.

tx,
r

Hello Russell -

Feel free to ask for any clarification you may require prior to, or if
you choose to rate this answer.

While finishing up this answer, an idea occurred to me on another way
to find estimates on the number of sponsored events.  Two simple
searches on Google of:

"event is sponsored by" - 77,200 links
"events are sponsored by" - 6,840 links

yield 84,040 links of all types that contain these phrases.  Figure
the second search phrase is referring to more than one event that is
sponsored, and the first may have redundant references.  These might
cancel each other somewhat. But you know there are at least tens of
thousands of documented events here.

 
 
2003 - U.S. Sponsored Spending
==============================

Total spent in sponsorships: $10,250,000,000 

Breakdown as follows:


--

High profile professional, college, and amateur sports: $7,080,000,000 - 69.1%

According to the Sports Marketplace directory published by Grey House
(http://www.greyhouse.com/), there are 1,849 high profile events for
2004.  The directory lists everything from parachuting to hockey,
olympic events, etc. -- most of them are sponsored.  Taking the 2004
projected number of sport sponsorships of $7.69B divided by 1,849
gives an extremely estimated average of about $4.2M per high profile
event.

--

Festivals, fairs and annual events: $769,000,000 - 7.5%

The International Association of Fairs and Expositions (IAFE)
http://www.fairsandexpos.com/, one of the largest organizations in the
industry, says among high profile state, county and related fairs,
there are about 1,355 -- majority are sponsored.  An average cannot be
extrapolated from the $769M, because it includes nonfair events.

--

Non-profit causes: $922,000,000 - 9%
http://www.ncna.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=412

Ephraim Feig at Kintera
http://www.kintera.org/site/pp.asp?c=9qLQKYNGE&b=6442
858-795-3005
858-775-0824

He says there are easily a million sponsorship opportunities of $100 -
$100,000+ with the 500,000 registered 501(c)3's that fill out form 990
(not counting churches).

According to Jeff at Nonprofit Times( www.nptimes.com), as well as the
following link, there are between 1.4 to 1.5 million *total*
non-profit organizations in the US:

http://www.sumptionandwyland.com/documents/term-limits.htm
According to BoardSource and IRS figures, there are over 1.5 million
nonprofit organizations in the U.S. (over 800,000 501(c)3's alone) and
over 17 million nonprofit board positions.  Most of these
organizations are relatively small, locally based groups with heavy
participation by volunteers and limited staff support.

There may be many more events sponsored through these remaining
nonprofits, including churches.

-- 

Entertainment, tours and attractions: $871,000,000 - 8.5%
(Museums, zoos, aquariums, art tours)

--


Performing arts: $608,000,000 - 5.9%


-----

The previous expenditure data courtesy of IEG, which can be found,
along with other statistics (including the top sponsors in the US) at
this link:

http://68.15.21.151/uploads/researchers/12_22_03_SR_issue.pdf

-----------------------

According to the Center for Exhibition research, here is a breakdown
of exhibition events being held in the US:

      Exhibition / Convention Center: 4,173 
Conference Center / Seminar Facility: 798
                               Hotel: 4,532
              Other / Not Classified: 1,591

                               Total: 11,094

This data is on all exhibitions occupying at least 3,000 net square
feet of space and includes at least 10 exhibiting companies -
including both B2B and consumer exhibitions.  More than 13,000 events
have been counted - three times the levels frequently reported.  99.9%
have some level of sponsorship.

--

According to Verizon Superpages, at
http://yellowpages.superpages.com/yp.advanced.jsp?SRC=&STYPE=AD&CB=&C=&N=&A=&X=&P=&AL=&R=&PS=15&RR=10&E=&T=&S=NJ&Z=&

Verifiably, there are in the US, *at least*:

55,082 elementary schools
12,629 convention centers


According to these three links, there are approximately 50,000 high
schools in the United States:

Texas Military Institute
http://www.tmi-sa.org/scat_history_cadets.html

Colgate University
http://www4.colgate.edu/scene/sept2003/admission.html

SATBank
http://www.designerclub-la.com/sat/instructor.html


--

Here are a list of cities with population over 100,000:

Infoplease
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108676.html

Approximately 233

--

Other statistics on cities:

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0108476.html

--

Cities and villages over 25,000:

http://www.demographia.com/db-city2002.htm

1290 total cities.

--

On all levels, I estimate there are millions of sponsored events
occurring every year in the US.





Search strategy:
Started out with general search terms
and called many organizations

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Request for Answer Clarification by russell1747-ga on 24 Mar 2004 15:57 PST

great work thanks,
where is the 10B number from,
and where are the percentages from?

is that from the ieg report?

tx,
r

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Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 24 Mar 2004 16:21 PST

Thanks... let me know if you have any questions.  Yes, the percentages
and dollar figure are from IEG.

---

Clarification of Answer by jbf777-ga on 29 Mar 2004 11:57 PST

More uncovered:

http://www.staugustine.com/stories/111602/opi_1127138.shtml
The National Golf Foundation in Jupiter has done the thinking for us.
The foundation's research was based on a representative sample of more
than 1,000 golf course operations. Those interviewed were asked about
event revenue, goods and services donated by a course to the event,
sponsorships and number of participants.

The report says that there are more than 140,000 sponsored events
annually with some 15 million participants. It goes on to say that
professional tournaments generate $75 million to $100 million annually
to the charities they support.

---

Sarasota Fl sponsored events
http://www.sarasotagov.com/InsideCityGovernment/Content/Budget/FinancePDFFiles/2004AdoptedBudget/46aMunAuds.pdf

It was helpful that the researcher asked clarification questions, so
we could refine the question.  Then the researcher dug further and
that was helpful.
It was a tough multi-part questions with lots of elements, some of
which there was simply not alot to go on.

Russell -

Thank you very much for the kind words and tip.  I appreciate it! 
Please let me know if you have any additional questions, and stop by
again!

jbf777-ga