This is a surprise.
As Anna Wintour prepares for tonight’s annual Met Ball aka Halloween show, finances are becoming a big problem.
According to the Metropolitan Museum’s form 990 tax return, receipts for the 2023 Met Ball were down by about $11 million from 2022.
In 2022, the Ball produced $33 million, less a whopping almost $10 million of direct expenses.
But in the new filing for 2023, last year’s event netted just $22 million, although direct expenses were cut to $6 million.
How could the Gala generate so much less in 2023? After all, the ticket prices keep skyrocketing. Numbers like $275,000 a table are commonly heard.
Is interest in this hoary spectacular fading? Or is it costing too much to pay for celebrities, their stylists, and so on? Someone’s footing those bills, and it’s not the celebrities themselves, trust me.
Regardless, when the Met Gala is factored into the Museum’s total fundraising events, the final numbers are always in the red. Last year, the Gala weighed heavily on the bottom line bringing net income from all events to MINUS $7.6 million. At least that was better than in 2022, when that number was at MINUS $10.3 million.
