This one fell through for a number of reasons. The main ones being the people putting the money up in the escrow account never deposited it. As a promoter, he did the right thing by cancelling it. He gave them numerous chances to fulfill their promise and they never did. Plus the infrastructure they promise was not materializing. Sad, but these days it's better to be safe than sorry.
As a promoter of these events, the hardest part is finding sponsorship dollars. These days companies are putting their advertising budgets into different types of events.
Mike, makes sense, I didn't draw the line between "promoter" and "sponsorship." I have a small understanding of how these events run economically, but I do know how marketing works (I'm a director of market strategy for a multi-billion dollar org).
Finding companies wanting to spend sponsorship dollars is very easy. Asking them to shift the budget from a direct lead attribution channel, for example, to sponsorship, is very challenging. I receive pitches for everything from Chicago-based Single-A baseball teams, to the big guys at NASCAR and everything in-between. I'll tell you - everything BUT the top-level NASCAR guys is a complete joke. Don't make me figure out how to make my sponorship dollars work for me and provide a positive ROI (that's your job). If you can't tell me how you'll activate your fans/visitors/BBQ festival atendees to interact, engage with or gain additional awarness and education of my brand, then I'm not interested.
In short, I have a strong feeling the sponorship dollars aren't falling into place not because of fiscal marketing budgets, but because the promoters are failing to understand basic marketing concepts.