3 days ago
2025 NYC Pride Parade sees noticeable drop in corporate sponsorships amid DEI backlash
New York City's Pride Parade draws a colorful, overflowing crowd to celebrate the LGBTQ community each year. But there was one glaring difference in 2025 compared to previous years: a noticeable drop in visible corporate sponsorships adorning the parade route.
The parade celebrated its 55th anniversary this year. The official theme, 'Rise Up: Pride and Protest,' was selected to honor the legacy of the first Pride march in 1970, the year after the Stonewall Inn riots, according to the event organizers.
But the theme also reflected the mixed reception of nationwide rollbacks of diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
'We've experienced maybe a dip in about $750,000 in sponsorship. But we've actually raised $110,000 in just the last couple of days from 250 unique sponsors,' said Kazz Alexander, co-chair of NYC Pride. 'So that demonstrates how much people are willing to commit to this cause and how much we're all coming together.'
Norman Trotter moved to New York City from Los Angeles and is celebrating his first East Coast Pride but is a bit disappointed in the lack of visible corporate sponsors.
'[I'm] hurt, you know, because we are also supporting these companies, or going to their stores or shops or giving them money for them to pull back and say, 'You're not worth it.' It's painful,' Trotter told NBC News at the parade Sunday.
Sophia Huf moved to the East Coast from Minnesota and is also celebrating their first NYC Pride.
'I love seeing all the diversity and how many people are just out here,' they said.
But they said they are concerned with the lack of companies on the parade route this year.
'It hurts a little bit. Like certain companies ... I really feel like they did care for a long time, especially with stuff like their trans health care, stuff like that. And now that they're kind of pulling back on that DEI, it hurts. It feels like a betrayal,' they said.
According to a survey from Gravity Research, 39% of corporations are scaling back external Pride Month engagements this year. That's a double-digit increase from last year, when only 9% of corporations were changing their Pride plans.
An NBC News report also found that the organizers of several of the country's premier Pride celebrations lost an estimated $200,000 to $350,000 apiece in funding from corporate sponsors this year.
'We went out and we surveyed a group of corporate executives, 49 executives, to be specific, in the run-up to Pride Month,' Gravity Research President Luke Hartig said.
'Sixty-five percent of our respondents said that they feared backlash in some way to their Pride engagement. And when we asked them specifically what stakeholders are driving your adjustments to Pride, overwhelmingly, the biggest drivers of those adjustments were the Trump administration and conservative activists and consumers,' Hartig told NBC News.
Additionally, Gravity Research found that no companies surveyed in 2025 reported an increase in Pride investments.
Hartig said many of these large corporations are continuing internal DEI efforts but have lowered their public visibility for supporting identity-based months, like February's Black History Month and June's Pride, due to fear of backlash.
'Backlash can take a number of tangible effects. It can result in consumer-related boycotts. It can certainly result in the tarnishing of a brand. I think when it comes to the fear that a number of our respondents cited of the Trump administration, it also threatens to pull companies into this broader kind of anti-DEI effort we've seen from the administration,' he said.
'And that has included threats of investigations from the Department of Justice, from the FCC, from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. So to the extent that companies are concerned that they could get pulled into some of those broader investigations because of their actions, in private [they] certainly [are] going to have a chilling effect on their actions,' Hartig added.
Just this week, the Supreme Court sided with Maryland parents who wanted to opt their children out of learning from LGBTQ themed books in classrooms.
Globally, Pride parades have also faced major backlash. Yet over 100,000 people still showed up to a Pride parade in Budapest, Hungary, on Saturday despite a government ban.
Attendees of the New York parade on Sunday said despite the rollbacks, it's more important than ever to celebrate the LGBTQ community.
'We need to show people that we're here, we're not going away. This can't be hidden. We cannot be hidden because we are people too. It's a show that we are people. We have pride in ourselves and our community, and should all come together,' Trotter said.
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