How to find sponsors for an event

Start with the companies already on the sponsor lists of events like yours. This guide builds a list from those public lists, using free pages on this site. You can start it today.

1. Find your event

Go to Events. Pick a sector, or choose Upcoming for conferences and trade shows in the next six months. The box at the top of the page finds an event by name.

If your event isn't listed, use the closest one you can find: same audience, similar size, same part of the year. Then cross off anyone who has already sponsored you.

2. Read the sponsor list

Open the event page. We'll use AI Engineer World's Fair as the example, because its full prospect list is open to everyone.

The sponsors table is grouped by edition, with each company at the level the organizer gave it. You can search the table and filter by level. Three things to look for:

• A New tag means the company wasn't on the previous edition's list.
• The fold under the table lists sponsors from the previous edition who aren't on the newer one.
• The Newsletters, Podcasts and Events columns show where else we've found each company.

Exhibitors and partners sit in their own sections. They aren't sponsors, and we don't count them as sponsors. A Filling in tag means the organizer is still publishing that list, so check back.

3. Open the prospect list

The box at the top of each event page has a link to see the first five prospects free. Prospects are companies that sponsor events like this one but not this one. They're ranked by how many similar events each company sponsors and how alike those events are, and each one shows which events.

The AI Engineer World's Fair prospect list is the full version. Mistral, Anthropic and ClickHouse appear there, each with the similar events it sponsors, such as NeurIPS, The AI Conference and Ai4. Copy the five you get for your event into a spreadsheet, along with the events beside each name.

Look for the Exhibits here tag. That company already has a booth at this event and doesn't sponsor it. For a show that's mostly booths, the list also includes companies exhibiting at similar shows.

If the event doesn't publish a sponsor list we can read, some prospects may already sponsor it. Check before you write.

4. Check who left and what changed

Further down the prospect page, Former sponsors sponsoring elsewhere lists companies on an earlier sponsor list but not the latest, who are on another event's list now. The first three are free. Each row names the events.

What changed since the last edition shows who's new on the list, who didn't come back, and who changed level. If you run the event, you know these names already. If you're studying a rival event, this is how you see its year.

5. Add rivals of your sponsors

Back on the event page, Rivals of its sponsors shows companies with a rival on this event's list and nothing on file here themselves. The first three are free.

To go further, open Compare and filter by category or company. If Datadog sponsors your event, Observability platforms puts it next to Elastic, New Relic, Grafana Labs and the rest, with their event listings by sector. A head-to-head such as Datadog vs New Relic shows the outlets both have used and the ones only one has.

For companies in your field that buy newsletters and podcasts, open Lanes, such as Cybersecurity newsletters. The monthly reports show what each company type bought across all three channels.

If a company shows nothing here, we haven't seen it. That doesn't mean it doesn't buy.

6. Check each company, then write

Open each company's page from your spreadsheet. It shows the events, newsletters and podcasts where we've found it. Add the last event it sponsored and the level.

We don't sell contact details, so you'll find the right person yourself. Start with the company's event marketing, field marketing or partnerships team.

When you write, name the events the company sponsored and the level. Say what's the same about your audience, and leave out what you can't show. Every row on our event pages links to the organizer's own page, so you can check a fact before you use it.

7. Keep the list current

We check event lists weekly. At the bottom of each event page you can sign up for a Monday email of companies new to that sector's sponsor lists.

If you want every prospect for an event with a CSV, that's what Event Seller is for. The steps above don't need it.