Live Nation Debuts Naming-Rights Sponsorship For Brands

Live Nation has announced a premium sponsorship slot for its roster of American music festivals — naming rights. First up is 7-Eleven, which has taken top billing at the upcoming pop-punk and alternative rock fest, When We Were Young.

The Main Stage: The pendulum has certainly swung from the all-virtual days of COVID. Brands are now singing, “I want to be where the people are,” like they’re Ariel in The Little Mermaid — companies’ spending on live and experiential events has soared 10% year-over-year, per PQ Media. With only so much premium-fest real estate to go around, the biggest flex on Madison Avenue may soon be a top-tier sponsorship with an audience that best represents their customers.

Between the Sets: Prepare for your Instagram feed to get flooded with videos of Slurpees set to blink-182 hits.

• Rumored to be a seven-figure deal, 7-Eleven’s sponsorship of When We Were Young marks the first time Live Nation has sold the naming rights to a US festival — it’ll now be called When We Were Young Presented by 7-Eleven.
• The company piloted the program internationally in recent years, including the Coca-Cola Flow Fest in Mexico and Rockstar Energy Presents Reading Festival in the UK.
• At When We Were Young, 7-Eleven will have a hangout area where it’ll hand out free Slurpees and have its name up on the main stage (now called the 7-Eleven Stage).

Encore: Russell Wallach, Live Nation’s global president of media and sponsorship, likens the fest naming-right sponsorship to “our equivalent to naming an arena or a stadium [that allow brands to be] truly part of everything we’re doing — every aspect of marketing and promotion and media.”

While this isn’t the first time that brands have sponsored top-tier fests (Vans and Warped Tour are like peanut butter and jelly), scaling the practice could be a massive moneymaker for Live Nation — its adjusted operating income from sponsorships was $764 million in 2024, which was already up 13% from 2023.