Jupiter Festival, a new event started by Cannes Lions alum William Mellis and former Fox Sports Media Group CMO Eric Markgraf, touched down in Miami Beach this week. Across four days and three stages, it hosted discussions between media, entertainment, sports, and advertising leaders about creators and the attention economy, fandom and sports rights, and AI’s impact on creative and discovery.
With backing from Art Basel parent MCH Group (which owns 20% of the venture), as well as Cannes Lions, YouTube, Boston Consulting Group, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, it’s a highly ambitious play for industry dollars in an already packed conference circuit.
The event lineup included big names like MS NOW’s Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough, former Paramount president Wendy McMahon, Fox One boss Pete Distad, former 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, and former LVMH North America CEO Anish Melwani.
On the surface, the event reads like a challenge to Miami-based Possible, which made a splash in 2023 when it debuted with a lineup anchored by Elon Musk. That event, under the leadership of Hyve Group’s Beyond Ordinary Events and Christian Muche, has since tripled in size. This year, Possible grew its sponsorship revenue 55% year over year.
Mellis acknowledged that Possible has seen “incredible growth,” but called it “a buyer-seller media marketplace.” It shares some “adjacencies” with Jupiter but has a differentiated audience and programming, he said.
Marketers are split during conference season
Jupiter conflicted with Advertising Week New York, which took place from Oct. 5-8 at The Penn District in Manhattan. The timing invites the question of whether Jupiter was a strategic play to draw some of that crowd. Jupiter’s leaders insist the clash was one of circumstance, not strategy. Mellis and Markgraf said that this week was the only viable slot for the group to secure space at the Miami Beach Convention Center, adding that they intend to avoid an overlap next year.
While Jupiter is certainly “competing for sponsorship dollar and mindshare” against other events in the space, Mellis said, it’s trying to do something fundamentally different by focusing specifically on the world of media, entertainment, and sports. Its core idea was synthesized neatly in its WiFi password: FutureOfContent.
Mellis hopes that Jupiter is “creating the debate around where is this industry going and [addressing] all the challenges that we’re in.”
