A sign bearing the Toronto International Film Festival logo is carried on a fork lift in downtown Toronto on Sept. 7, 2017.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
After parting ways with long-time lead sponsor Bell at the end of last year, the Toronto International Film Festival announced Wednesday that Rogers Communications, Canada’s other leading telecom, is coming onboard as the “presenting sponsor” of its 49th annual festival, including the TIFF People’s Choice Awards.
The inaugural partnership arrangement will support this year’s festival, which runs Sept. 5 through 15, but will not cover year-round activities inside the not-for-profit arts organization.
“This is a big vote of confidence in what we’ve been doing at TIFF, for the festival specifically, for almost 50 years,” TIFF chief executive Cameron Bailey said in an interview. “This is a little different for us, it’s a new partnership for a new time and context … Rogers is excited to get onboard.”
Bell, a subsidiary of BCE Inc., contributed roughly $5-million each year to TIFF, making the company by far the largest single sponsor in TIFF’s portfolio of corporate partners. Financial details of the Rogers sponsorship were not made available.
The new arrangement arrives as TIFF prepares to launch a comeback edition of its annual fall extravaganza, one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world.
After delivering two scaled-back hybrid editions during the pandemic, TIFF’s ambitions were thwarted again last year because of the timing of the dual strikes from members of the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA. The labour actions ensured a significant absence of the red-carpet talent that has become so crucial to the TIFF experience. As a result, TIFF lost $2.76-million in revenue in 2023 from stakeholders reducing or cancelling their festival participation.
“The festival is still the biggest thing that we do, with the largest number of people who we’re engaging with,” Bailey said. “And this includes the People’s Choice Awards, which are a big deal for us and in the industry’s awards season, and will be prominent and visible in terms of how the Rogers partnership works.”
In addition to Rogers, TIFF is exploring opportunities to work with other new sponsors across all tiers. While RBC and Visa remain as “major sponsors,” the luxury jewellery brand Bvlgari quietly ended its partnership with TIFF this past winter, two years into its three-year deal.
The Globe can also confirm that Therme Group, the private Austrian company whose development of a large spa and waterpark at Ontario Place has raised the ire of opposition politicians and community advocates, is no longer partnered with TIFF after the arts institution “paused” their relationship ahead of last year’s festival. In 2021, TIFF and Therme announced a 10-year philanthropic partnership called the Cinematic Cities.
In its 2022 annual report, the most recent one made available, TIFF noted that corporate sponsorships accounted for $13.4-million, or 28 per cent, of the organization’s total earned revenue.
The Rogers partnership, which will include a significant marketing presence on King Street West when that downtown artery is closed to traffic Sept. 5 through 8, represents the latest wave in a fresh surge of support for TIFF.
In April, the federal government committed $23-million over three years for TIFF to launch what Bailey calls a “game-changing” official content market in 2026, similar to the European Film Market that runs parallel to the Berlinale or the Marché du Film at Cannes.
Ottawa’s investment, which aims to position TIFF as the premiere North American hub for buying and selling screen-based projects across all platforms, is the single-largest government source of funding that TIFF has received since its campaign to build its Lightbox headquarters, which opened in 2010.
“We’re in the planning and foundation phase of the market now, keeping in close touch with Ottawa in terms of working through the three-year plan in detail,” Bailey said. “We need to make sure this serves the global industry and Canadian creators. The best storytellers here can stand shoulder to shoulder with anybody in the world, and we want to give them the tools and ability to get there.”
TIFF’s 49th festival will open with the Ben Stiller comedy Nutcrackers and include such buzzy world premieres as the Amy Adams dramedy Nightbitch and concert documentaries featuring superstars Elton John and Bruce Springsteen. More programming will be announced in early August.