A wristband expires. A SIM doesn't.
Harborfront is a 4-day music festival drawing 180,000 attendees annually across the UK and Northern Europe. The festival operated as most do — three days of intense brand engagement, then 362 days of dormancy. A branded eSIM bundled with the festival pass turned the relationship into a year-round membership and tripled what sponsors were willing to pay.
Harborfront had a passionate brand and an enormous attendee base, but the relationship had a four-day window. Once the wristbands came off, the email open rates collapsed within two weeks and sponsor renewals had to be re-pitched from cold. Sponsors weren't getting year-round value — they were getting a long weekend.
Internal sponsorship deck research showed sponsors wanted three things: real engagement data (not vanity metrics), audience continuity (not just on-site reach), and a way to communicate with attendees between editions. The festival had no infrastructure to deliver any of these.
Building a year-round member app had been considered and abandoned twice. The team's read: 'Attendees don't want another app. They want an excuse to stay connected.'
Harborfront bundled a branded eSIM into the festival pass — 7 days of festival-priced data during the event, with the option to convert to a low-cost monthly plan after. The eSIM displayed 'Harborfront' as the network name on the device. The welcome message, low-balance alerts, and renewal prompts all carried Harborfront branding.
OneConnect drove the sponsor-facing engagement layer: real-time anonymized attendee flow data during the event, geo-triggered branded notifications from sponsors, and a year-round push channel direct to attendee devices. Sponsors got an analytics dashboard that mattered.
Critically, the eSIM didn't expire when the wristband did. Members who chose to keep their plan stayed connected — and stayed in the community. The 365-day relationship became the basis of every renewed sponsorship pitch.
Sponsors who saw the real-time engagement dashboards renewed at +40% versus the prior year, with a tier-upgrade rate of +62%. The branded eSIM became the most-talked-about element of the attendee kit on social channels.
Sponsor renewals are up 40% because we can finally show real engagement data. The branded eSIM is the most-talked-about element of our member kit.
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