Toronto-Dominion (TD) bank has now quietly ended its longtime sponsorship of the Toronto Jazz Festival and Calgary's JazzYYC Summer Festival following the 2024 editions of both events, The Globe and Mail reports.
TD was the principal sponsor of both festivals, which gave it naming rights. The financial institution has long partnered with the country's most prominent jazz fests, but has also removed itself from the lead sponsorship position for the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Ottawa Jazz Festival in recent years. In the case of the former, the 2023 edition was billed as a "smaller, more sustainable festival" after the funding cut, and organizers Coastal Jazz even sought direct donations from the community last December.
According to journalist Josh O'Kane, TD claims to remain committed to funding Canadian music and arts by seeding money to various awards and organizations, as well as holding naming rights to venues in Toronto and Montreal, and continuing to sponsor other jazz-oriented events around the country. However, the bank did not disclose why it had pulled its titular sponsorship of some of the nation's biggest jazz festivals after many years.
"We have made changes to some of our sponsorships over time," Natasha Ferrari, the bank's senior manager of corporate and public affairs, told The Globe and Mail in an email. "We continue to elevate and celebrate emerging artists and diverse voices through our direct support of 385 arts and culture organizations across Canada in 2024, including sponsorship of more than 55 music and cultural festivals."
Kodi Hutchinson, the executive and artistic director of JazzYYC, told O'Kane that TD's funding represented about 10 percent of the Calgary festival's budget. After hosting 42 events last summer — 17 of which were free — that number is expected to fall to 19 for the 2025 edition, with only four events to be offered free of charge. "Some festivals will have to reduce greatly, which causes further difficulties in getting a sponsor," Hutchinson explained. "It's circular."
Meanwhile, the Toronto Jazz organizers were given notice ahead of the 2024 iteration of the festival that it would be the final year that TD would be sponsoring the event — which prompted them to pre-emptively drop the popular Avenue Road stage, which has hosted performances by the likes of BADBADNOTGOOD and Ashanti in recent years, from last year's programming.
"The reality of taking a bare patch of grass and creating a concert venue is very expensive," artistic director Josh Grossman said, declining to share the size of TD's sponsorship with O'Kane — but said that corporate sponsors generally account for 30 to 40 percent of the Toronto Jazz budget.
More widely, corporate sponsors have turned away from major arts sponsorships in the last decade, with O'Kane reporting that their money is more frequently supporting sporting events and cause-oriented organizations.