Festival Media Corporation Announces New Sponsorship Sales System on Festivals.com Producer BackStage

New Free Service Allows Festival Producers to Input and Manage Sponsor Packages, Download Free Visitor Survey Form, and be Represented for National Sponsorship

Seattle, WA November 11, 2005 – Festival Media Corporation (FMC), a company that automates festival, fair and event sponsorship planning, purchasing and evaluation in the $2 billion festival marketplace, today announced the launch of a new Producer BackStage service, free to festival producers who list their events on the Company’s leading website, Festivals.com (www.festivals.com/backstage).
        “Backstage has been an Application Service Platform since 1995, when Festivals.com was launched,” said Charles D. Brown, Chairman and CEO of Festival Media Corporation. “We have spent two years and nearly $2 million in development of the new Producer BackStage. This is a complete revision of the platform and an exponential leap in capability offered to the festival producer.”
        At the core of Producer BackStage is the ability for festival producers to improve the information needed by sponsors: from visitor demographic profiles, to validated attendance figures, and the ability to select and “customize” festival assets for sponsorship.
        The new Producer Backstage also introduces a new feature for festival producers in the form of a free visitor survey form, organized by US Census data categories. Producers can download the form and instructions, make copies, and conduct on site surveys that will provide results useable by national sponsor companies. FMC offers this service free to festival producers to encourage the development of better marketing information for national sponsors, and therefore greater opportunity for local festivals to receive national sponsor company support.
        “FMC will use Producer Backstage to represent festivals across North America to national sponsor companies. These are companies that need to reach millions of consumers in multiple cities and markets. Even the largest of community festivals cannot hope to satisfy these companies’ needs alone. Often, the festivals cannot even get a response to their proposals.” said Brown. “We believe this is an entirely new way to help national consumer product and service companies tap the enormous value of the 200-plus million US consumers who annually attend local festivals; and provide those companies with sponsorship opportunities that many of them are missing today. Festivals are the only places where consumers spend 5-8 hours over 1 or 2 days, without any particular agenda other than to enjoy the festival. This makes the opportunity for companies that sponsor festivals greater than other event marketing channels.”

About Festival Media Corporation

Festival Media Corporation (FMC) automates sponsorship rights purchasing in the fragmented festival and events industry. FMC has operated the industry’s top consumer website (Festivals.com) since 1995. Festivals.com has delivered nearly 100 million impressions, sits atop the leading search engines (keyword “festivals”) and provides information to SBC SMARTpages City Guides, The Food TV Network and other leading content websites.

FMC’s Backstage ASP platform was launched in 1995 with Festivals.com and automates the collection of festival and event information from producers. Since its inception Backstage has registered and promoted more than 45,000 events that have attracted 387 million attendees. FMC has developed relationships with thousands of these events who have benefited from FMC’s promotion services to consumers.

FMC’s new ASP products use the Festivals.com, Backstage and the Internet environment to offer both to sponsors and to event producers new value in promotion, business development, marketing and measurement.

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