Top sponsor sought for millennium concert

The search is on for a blue-chip company to sponsor a multimillion pound New Year’s Eve millennium concert for live broadcast on BBC1.

Initial, producers of TV shows such as The Pepsi Chart and The Brit Awards and one of GMG Endemol Entertainment’s production arms, will stage the concert called “As Time Goes By” in Greenwich.

Events promoter Barry Marshall, who has organised concerts starring Tina Turner and Paul McCartney, has been approached to promote the event, which will aim to tell the story of the millennium through music.

The ticket-only show will be staged in the shadow of the Royal Observatory on the Greenwich Meridian, home of Greenwich Mean Time. It will be broadcast on New Year’s Eve on BBC1. Subsequent broadcast rights will be sold around the world by Gem, GMG Endemol Entertainment’s commercial exploitation arm.

Initial is offering the chance for the sponsor’s brand to be a central part of the concert’s image, which it plans to use in the creative ideas around the event.

A GMG Endemol Entertainment spokesman says: “The unique setting and global scale of the event has created interest among leading blue chip enterprises, in sectors ranging from finance to telecoms.”