Jupiter Festival Lined up Splashy Sponsors but Had a Soft Landing In Its First Year

Jupiter Festival, a new event started by Cannes Lions alum William Mellis and former Fox Sports Media Group CMO Eric Markgraf, touched down in Miami Beach this week. Across four days and three stages, it hosted discussions between media, entertainment, sports, and advertising leaders about creators and the attention economy, fandom and sports rights, and AI’s impact on creative and discovery. With backing from Art Basel parent MCH Group (which owns 20% of the venture), as well as Cannes Lions, YouTube, Boston Consulting Group, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, it’s a highly ambitious play for industry dollars in an already packed conference circuit. The event lineup included big names like MS NOW’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough, former Paramount president Wendy McMahon, Fox One boss Pete Distad, former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, and former LVMH North America CEO Anish Melwani. On the surface, the event reads like a challenge to Miami-based Possible, which made a splash in 2023 when it debuted with a lineup anchored by Elon Musk. That event, under the leadership of Hyve Group’s Beyond Ordinary Events and Christian Muche, has since tripled in size. This year, Possible grew its sponsorship revenue 55% year over year. Mellis acknowledged that Possible has seen “incredible growth,” but called it “a buyer-seller media marketplace." It shares some “adjacencies” with Jupiter but has a differentiated audience and programming, he said. Marketers are split during conference season Jupiter conflicted with Advertising Week New York, which took place from Oct. 5-8 at The Penn District in Manhattan. The timing invites the question of whether Jupiter was a strategic play to draw some of that crowd. Jupiter’s leaders insist the clash was one of circumstance, not strategy. Mellis and Markgraf said that this week was the only viable slot for the group to secure space at the Miami Beach Convention Center, adding that they intend to avoid an overlap next year. While Jupiter is certainly “competing for sponsorship dollar and mindshare” against other events in the space, Mellis said, it’s trying to do something fundamentally different by focusing specifically on the world of media, entertainment, and sports. Its core idea was synthesized neatly in its WiFi password: FutureOfContent. Mellis hopes that Jupiter is “creating the debate around where is this industry going and [addressing] all the challenges that we’re in.” In the end, Jupiter Festival attracted 2,231 attendees, 30% of whom were C-suite or higher, conference organizers said. Although a webpage on B2B event platform Luminik listed expected attendance as 5,000, actual turnout was in line with organizers’ expectations, Mellis and Markgraf said. "We always thought we were going to be between 2,000 and 3000, and anything over 2,000 for a first-time festival...was what we really wanted to get," Markgraf said. They declined to specify how many attendees paid the full-price rate or to define their attendance target for next year. But in the windowless, capacious hall at the Miami Beach Convention Center this week, the buzz didn’t always match the billing. Around mid-morning on Wednesday, the first full day of programming, I arrived to a virtually empty lobby. On the show floor, a jazz duet played to an array of empty seats in front of the bathrooms. An emcee took the stage with gusto as people trickled in with coffees in hand. The crowd grew thicker later in the day and into Thursday, but multiple attendees, speaking on condition of anonymity, agreed the space seemed too big for the number of people. “The space is ambitious,” one person said. One panel speaker said they were told to expect hundreds of audience members for their onstage session but that only a few dozen turned up. On the other hand, the smaller volume of people, one attendee said, encouraged more in-depth and productive conversations. Creating the right conditions for these kinds of conversations was a key focus of Mellis’ and Markgraf’s as they stood up the festival. “The show is fundamentally built for networking from start to finish,” Mellis said. “There's a lot of design, a lot of psychology that's gone into it. People will tell you they come for the content, but they really come for networking. They come to build relationships. They come to meet new people. They come to establish partnerships.” Built for content But it was also apparent that the event and the space were “built to create content,” as one attendee said. An imposing podcasting studio-slash-stage sat in the middle of the conference floor, while some attendees snapped selfies, and a creator filmed street-interview style content in front of a pop-up exhibit of work by artist Justyn Farano. Meanwhile, some of the event’s key backers and sponsors—MCH, BCG, and Cannes Lions—were largely invisible. YouTube, however, made its presence known, hosting happy hours throughout the week on the rooftop of the nearby Unframed Marriott Bonvoy Hotel and sponsoring the event’s VIP area. On the conference floor, PBS, Sports Illustrated, and adtech company Transmit set up small activations. Mellis and Markgraf declined to answer questions about minimum spend requirements or average investment from sponsors at this year’s show, but claimed that sponsorship commitments for 2027 have already surpassed this year's sponsor revenue by 250%. One sponsor agreed to a 12-fold increase in spend, they said. The execs declined to share this year’s revenue figures. Overall, feedback on Jupiter Festival has been overwhelmingly positive, they said. “The show has manifested itself exactly in the way that I wanted,” Mellis said.Jupiter Festival will return to the Miami Beach Convention Center next year, organizers said, with aspirations to extend to additional venues across the city. They are also “looking at jazzing it up a bit,” Mellis said, considering different partnerships and even an awards show. “My objective,” Mellis said, “is five years from now, if you’re in content or you depend on content, this is a must-attend event.”

Events

Jupiter Festival Lined up Splashy Sponsors but Had a Soft Landing In Its First Year

Organizers say 2,231 attendees met their goal but the show felt sparse at times

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Kendra Barnett

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