Bands make most of their money by touring is the common wisdom in the music industry. Interestingly, concert promoters are making an increasingly large chunk of their revenue through sponsorship deals. The most recent of which is a deal between Live Nation and Smirnoff for EDM-based festivals, which will make the brand the "official vodka sponsor" of 26 events (from Billboard).

The deal will come with the ability for the liquor brand to put its name on exclusive concert experiences. The Smirnoff Sound Collective allowed fans to hang out with performers such as Steve Aoki, Zeds Dead, Tommy Trash and Hayden James at SFX festivals during 2014. Electronic Dance Music has been a popular genre for advertisers to latch onto in recent years, as 7 Up and Bud Light Platinum both teamed up with Live Nation for events during 2014, and will return during 2015.

That's just scratching the surface of Live Nation's sponsorship deals. Citi is one of the promoter's biggest partners and it just announced Hilton as its official hotel partner. The non-music entities pay for advertising at Live Nation events, on its website and even printed on tickets, and in exchange the promoter helps them connect to talent for events to build the brands name among concertgoers.

It's a lucrative business for Live Nation, which reported $300.3 million in sponsorship and advertising revenue during 2014...up 5 percent from the year before.

Smirnoff has a heck of an events roster now, of course. You can check out the festivals it's now affiliated with below:

- The Electric Daisy Carnivals (Las Vegas, New York, Orlando and London)

- The Wonderland series (Los Angeles and San Francisco)

- The HARD Series (Denver and Los Angeles)

- The Voodoo Music + Arts Experience (New Orleans)

- Wireless Festival (London)

- Latitude Festival (Suffolk)

- The Reading and Leeds Festivals

- Creamfields (Liverpool)

- Glasgow Sessions

- SonneMondSterne (Germany)

- Rock'n'Heim (Germany)

-Pinkpop (Netherlands)

- We Are Electric (Netherlands)

- Dcode (Spain)

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