The paper presents some preliminary findings on the role of consumer knowledge in cultural event sponsorships. Using a field design, the impact of consumer knowledge on the brand image transfer wasmeasured. Two international cultural events were examined and a total of 853 respondents participated in this study. The Kruskall-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests were performed to determine whether there were any differences in brand image transfer between experts (‘high-knowledge’ spectators) and novices (‘low-knowledge’ spectators). The results reveal that image-building effects in cultural event sponsorship are considerably less pronounced if event spectators are highly knowledgeable about an event and its sponsoring brand. The findings indicate to what extent a brand may thrive on event sponsorship and how important it is to track current market segmentation and brand positioning.