How hands-off sponsorship revived Tropfest
John Polson returns Tropfest to its Sydney home - with a little help from some powerful people
“The great thing about Tropfest is it started very authentically as a dude making a short film,” says John Polson, “but the downside of that is — as a dude making a short film — I don’t know the people that Peter knows, and Sarah knows – and so they’ve been able to open some amazing doors, and then we come in.”
Polson is the founder of the legendary short film festival, which is returning in 2026 after what will be a seven-year hiatus.
He was interviewed by Mumbrella’s Cat McGinn at Unlock in Sydney on Thursday morning, where he outlined the festival’s long road back after financial woes, a much maligned shift from the Domain in central Sydney to Parramatta, and a global pandemic.
The Peter and Sarah he mentioned are Peter V’landys, chair of Australian Rugby League and the Victorian Racing Club, and Sarah Murdoch – heir to the world’s largest news media conglomerate. The pair were wrangled by actor and longtime Tropfest supporter Bryan Brown, who contacted Polson last year with a plan to bring back the festival.
Tropfest Foundation, a not-for-profit, was formed to relaunch the venture, with Brown, Polson, Murdoch, V’landys, and real estate baron Richard Weinberg as the foundation’s stacked board. The collective might of V’landys and Murdoch opened doors — and as Polson explained, all he needed to do was walk through.
“I thought in six years, it would have faded into the distance,” he said of the Tropfest brand. “I mean, I’m not just saying this, people love it more today than they did six years ago. I think when you lose something …”
Big name sponsors such as Qantas, the NSW Government, Nine, Commonwealth Bank, and Youtube were more-than eager to get on board.
“We have not had anyone say no in the last few months,” Polson said.
“People love this brand, which shocks the hell out of me, and so, you get into a room with Commbank, you just tell them about Tropfest — and they love it, and they see.”
Polson said rather than being too heavy handed, Commbank was wary of how its sponsorship would be perceived.
“They’ve been amazing. Their whole theme has been, ‘How do we bring back Tropfest without changing it? We don’t want to make it feel like a bank is owning it, or changing it. We just want to give you support, but let you run it the way it’s always run’.
“That’s music to your ears as a person looking for sponsorship — and then Youtube is very different.”
Polson stresses that Youtube, as the online broadcast sponsor, hasn’t interfered, but rather offers the perfect global platform to build the Tropfest brand — and to house the vast catalogue — in a digital age.
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In the eight weeks since relaunching the Tropfest Youtube channel, Polson said the video collection has had 120m views, with just 5% of these coming from Australia. Youtube provides the infrastructure, but has been as hands off as Commbank.
“They’re doing this global live stream, so they’re bringing a huge amount of eyeballs, which, of course, to any sponsor, that’s a major deal, knowing that you’re going to have a huge crowd.”
Polson posited that, when Tropfest started in the early 90s, it was ahead of its time. In the decades since, attention spans and screens have both shrunk, and appetite for short form video is dominating all other content forms.
“The fact that YouTube has embraced this thing, like, you wouldn’t believe they’ve really put their arms around this in a major way, it makes me think, ‘Wow, we’re almost a better fit for the planet today than we were at any other time in the last 30 years’.”
Polson said he entered back into Tropfest fully intending to turn down financial support if it didn’t align with the festival’s wider interests. He said, when looking for suitable brand partners, it needs to be “a one plus one equals three situation.”
“We do need financial support,” he said. “It’s a big event, it’s free to get into, so that’s got to be in there – but we also have an audience to take care of, so in a perfect partnership — and we’ve got a few of them now — they support us financially, and they get a lot out of it, because they get to access our crowd, but here’s the important part: our audience gets some benefit out of it.”
The event, which will be staged in Centennial Park next February, will feature on-ground activations designed to entertain crowds that start entering the park at 7am.
“So, it’s not just like, ‘give me a check and we’ll put your logo on’ … it was as creative with our partnerships as our filmmakers are with their films. We want to be creative.
“We want to look at a brand and go, ‘this is a brand we want to be in business with’, and we’re lucky enough that all of the brands so far are kind of blue chip. We’ve got Nine, we’ve got the government, we’ve got Qantas as our official airline partner. We’re just looking for partners who we can really engage with and be creative with and who can add value to our crowd.
“The good thing about Tropfest is because it’s free, I’ve always said our sponsors get a lot more love than, like, if you pay $120 for a ticket to a music festival — I don’t give a crap who the sponsors are. I paid $120, you know, get out of my way!
“Whereas, with Tropfest, I do think you’re sitting on the grass going, ‘I can’t believe this equipment, nobody asked me for money.’
“You get a lot of extra love [as a sponsor], because people know you’re putting it on.
“And it’s a gift to the city in that way.”
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