This New Jersey Festival of Ballooning will not return in 2020 unless new sponsors are found.
Howard Freeman of the Festival Group in Fairfield said Tuesday that the Readington-based event will be canceled in 2020 if one or more sponsors do not fill the vacancy left by QuickChek, which announced in October that after 26 years it will no longer serve as the event’s title sponsor.
According to Freeman, executive producer of the festival, the event, currently scheduled for July 24-26, will not be “a viable risk” for himself and his business partners unless they can secure an “angel" sponsor.
“There’s a lot of expenses -- seven-figures worth -- that is necessary to make it what it has become: the largest summertime balloon and music festival in North America based here in New Jersey," Freeman said.
Freeman emphasized that more than one sponsor can fill the lead role previously held by QuickChek.
“Whether that’s one person who wants to take on the whole enchilada and get all the benefits thereof, and have ownership of the festival as our former title sponsor had, or two or three that want to step up in such a way that the risk-reward ratio becomes feasible once again ... (because) after putting our hearts and soul into this for 27 years, this is not something we want to see go away," Freeman said.
Freeman added that “thousands of people,” work either part-time or full-time year-round to prepare for the three-day event. “Those are the people who I feel the worst for at this point,” Freeman said.
The Jan. 31 deadline to find a sponsor was determined by the “tremendous amount of work” that goes into orchestrating the summer festival, according to Freeman.
“When it comes to booking acts -- we’ve had the Beach Boys, Hall & Oates, Meatloaf, the Doobie brothers, the Jonas Brothers -- in the past, all those touring acts get routed and book up, as do the pilots and the balloons and the sponsors and their budgets," Freeman explained.
This year’s festival, which organizers said employed more than 2,500 people and pumped approximately $52.4 million into the state’s economy, drew a record crowd of approximately 169,500 people to the Solberg Airport.
Caroline Fassett can be reached at [email protected].
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