Elevate Acquires Zinc Agency, Introduces Elevate Experiences

Elevate has acquired Zinc Agency, a premium client experience firm, to further develop Elevate Experiences as an experiential hospitality division.

Elevate Experiences previously activated full-service B2C hospitality at events including U.S. Open tennis, Formula 1 U.S. Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas in Texas, Big East Conference, PGA Tour and more. With the addition of Zinc, Elevate will expand into B2B offerings including corporate clients and large-scale corporate events plus in-person and virtual events for fans, properties, hospitality, event planners and more.

The New York City-based Zinc Agency has produced over 1,000 corporate events annually since its founding five years ago by Will Steinberg and Zach Yabroff. The companies had worked together on various projects before today’s official acquisition.

“Having the working relationship with the Elevate team showed us how great their culture and people were,” Steinberg said. “We never had those exclusive rights to jewel events that they have. If we were servicing clients at U.S. Open tennis, we were doing it more surface level. (We’re) seeing the fruits of that labor already. We have a very busy U.S. Open with a lot of clients.”

The Grand Slam in Flushing Meadows, New York, will be one of the first events that Elevate Experiences will unveil fuller packages for. Steinberg said packages could be created for not only hotel reservations and transportation and experiences within the U.S. Open such as meet-and-greets with legendary former players, but they could also be combined with Broadway experiences and celebrity chef offerings throughout an attendee’s stay.

“From a B2B perspective, we have corporations that are coming to us every single day trying to customize experiences,” Yabroff said. “The lifeblood of their business is entertaining customers. Those same customers have a thirst to host around jewel events like the U.S. Open. It seemed like such a good dynamic to team up with Elevate.”

Steinberg and Yabroff will lead Elevate Experiences as managing partners and co-heads reporting to Elevate President of Property Sales Flavil Hampsten.

“From the rights side, there is a significant time and dollars spent outside of your event,” Hampsten said. “It weighs on the customer experience — you have a ticket but you don’t know the city and where to stay, what’s a great place for dinner. You’re analyzing your entire weekend rather than just enjoying the event itself.”

“It was really talent and expertise that stuck out the most,” Hampsten added. “What Elevate was doing previously with rights holders and bringing products that were immediate needs in the database, we were bringing in a B2C consumer … Will and Zach have done B2B events, so it was the perfect marriage of Rolodexes.”

Hampsten said Elevate has been focused on expanding its Experiences division and today’s news “makes our business a 365-day business for experiences when before, we were anchored to certain events,” he said.

One example is an experience Zinc was able to put on last year for a client where its top customers were invited for an experience at the St. Regis resort in Park City, Utah, where Yabloff said they were able to have headline music entertainment plus appearances from Olympians ranging from Michael Phelps to Lolo Jones and Bode Miller.

“I don’t think there’s been a better time to be in the experience industry as a whole,” Steinberg added. “Once somebody’s in our ecosystem of experiences, there’s nothing we can’t offer them. We both gain a lot from this. Having a seat on the ride in the experience space is really powerful.”

The acquisition marks the third for Elevate in 2024, which in February acquired executive search and talent optimization firm SRI, concurrently launching Elevate Talent. Elevate also acquired Fenway Sports Management’s Consulting Group in April.