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Money for Nothing: The Lucrative World of Club Appearances
- brianbreslin 11y agoThis isn't surprising. How else does a single night club in Miami pull in over $70M a year (LIV at fontainebleu hotel). For every 25k appearance there are 10 that night paying $5k each for bottle service nearby, and then another 1000 paying $100 for booze.
- jeffbarr 11y agoI was at LIV last week (an unpaid appearance :-)). Two drinks + tax + tip came out to $48.
- nxzero 11y agoPay for the drinks, stay for the experience... ;-)
- jeffbarr 11y agoWe did, until 3 AM. It was well worth the price.
- nxzero 11y agoLIV closes at 5AM, guess you left early, likely a wise idea... :-)
- AndrewUnmuted 11y agoIt's great to see high-profile Amazonians practicing the Leadership Principles in their personal lives. Frugality, Highest Standards, and Learn & Be Curious all in one night of partying!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- thinkdevcode 11y agoAs someone who's been to LIV a few times, I can say that entrance alone on most weekend nights (fri/sat) is $100. "Premium" drinks like Patron (how is that premium?) are $25 a glass. Those skyboxes on the second floor (that look down on the dance floor) start at $10,000 minimum. Fortunately, I never had to pay because I had a mutual friend with the owner. LIV is definitely on the top end of South Beach nightlife, but there are other clubs that have similar prices.
- avs733 11y agoI have a personal rule to never trust anyone who speaks in the third person...this article seems to validate that quite well. From another perspective though, is GQ effectively proposing Paris Hilton as a disruptive innovation? I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the business of recursive celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich). I honestly wonder what scholars 2-300 years from now will have to say about the development of reality television from Survivor to The Simple Life/Paris Hilton to the Kardashians to whatever will come next... and I cannot believe I just wrote this on HN
- nxzero 11y agoParis is a disruptive innovation, though just not one that the tech world sees an opportunity. On the other hand, social media is just as driven in large part by pop-culture, but tech loves it. Beyond that, most people crave what she's managed to create, not the only rich person in the world, yet she managed to make it happen. Now if it was only possible to make meaningful ideas & knowledge as viral using the same tactics.
- Touche 11y ago> I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the business of recursive celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich). Wait, why is the current royal family rich/famous?
- wutbrodo 11y agoThey were better at killing people+politics way back in the day.
- Synaesthesia 11y agoThis is some next level 0.1% shit.
- dandermotj 11y agoI think we're hitting the .00001% here. Such a bizarre reality.
- nkurz 11y agoActually, I think .1% might be right. .00001% is much, much richer than you are probably thinking. 99.9th percentile US net worth is about 30 million: http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015030pap.pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/20... Arbitrarily assuming a 5% return on that, that's 1.5 million dollars a year, which is about $5K per day. Go out to the club with a few of your .1% friends, and you are right in the $25K per table ballpark while still staying within budget.
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoAs I started reading, I was curious about the business model that would allow the clubs to spend this much money, on the basis that they had to recoup it and more within a single night. They kind of answer that near the end, but I'm still left a bit befuddled. Apparently there's multiple(!) groups of people who will pay $25,000 dollars minimum to sit at a table near Nikki Minaj for an hour? I can understand (if not condone) the birthday party thing, where you spend millions to get someone famous at your party, as by doing so you are saying "I have so many millions, I can do this ridiculous thing, or buy a famous painting, and still be richer than you". But it seems weird that it's a booming and widespread business model.
- return0 11y agoYou forget that rich people do not care about showing off their money to the middle class. They care about showing off to their peers and above. And that costs a lot.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoYeah this. If you're worth eight or nine figures, dropping $25k for hobnob with a celebrity is probably no big deal. From a percent of wealth perspective, its cheaper than what a middle class family would spend at Disney World.
- simonh 11y agoIt reminds me of something Neil deGrasse Tyson once pointed out. You or I might not stoop down to pick up a nickel off the floor, because it's not worth it. But maybe we would for a quarter. As a fraction of a decent middle class salary, a quarter is worth picking up. A similar fraction of Bill Gates wealth is worth about $35,000. For some people, what's big money for you or me is small change.
- sjtgraham 11y ago
- kriro 11y agoAnd here I am thinking it is insane that people pay for pictures of people on TV shows at comic con and the like. I have quite a few friends who are traveling the con circuit and always thought it was a strange secondary job market where ex stars get appearance fees and people pay for money (guys like some random Star Wars extra). Guess that's just small potatoes.
- breitling 11y ago"Without Ray J's dick, there's no Scott Disick. Without O. J. Simpson, there is no business for this family.” Just wow.
- tallanvor 11y ago> SKAM Artist Well, it's certainly a scam!
- NoGravitas 11y ago#LateStageCapitalism
- chetman 11y agoThe whole things seems incredibly distant and surreal to me, but I'm also the sort of person who would pay money to AVOID going to anything that bills itself as a "night club." I much prefer a cozy pub or a decent wine bar, ideally with the music low enough that conversation is possible. But, you know, I'm a giant nerd, so what do I know?
- eternalban 11y agoI click on this link and immediately my retina screams "please switch off!". It's an entirely different planet and species. An now I need to take a shower. /!s
- puppetmaster3 11y agoThis is related to HN how?
- gtk40 11y agoBecause it is "Anything that good hackers would find interesting" and/or "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- apalmer 11y agoIsnt this just advertising? I dont really understand how this is any different from other forms of celebrity endorsements such as basketball players pitching nike's. These guys faces are even on the flyers to the parties.
- aetherson 11y agoI think that there's a sense that, like, if you go and endorse a Nike shoe, okay, you might get paid a lot of money, but you still go and do a photo-shoot and maybe spend a frustrating day being filmed doing a jump-shot and have the director saying, "Okay, but can you do that with more intensity," whereas going to a club is supposed to be fun -- indeed, such fun that lots of basically ordinarily people pay fairly large amounts of money to go to it. So these people are being paid not to, like, fake go to a club in front of cameras and it's work, but literally be paid to have fun. I expect that the actuality of it is a little more complex than that, but there does seem like there's a grain of truth in it, too.
- tomsun 11y agoI don't know what I'm more sad about in this article, the fact that so much economic activity is dedicated to boast oneself's social status by paying to gain proximity to celebrities, or that these parties are insidious to a celebrity's mental and physical health.
- bechampion 11y agoSMSPF
- 086421357909764 11y agoThey're leaving out the bigger part in that Clubs are a very easy way to launder money. When the hire these celebrities to show up it makes it even easier to move larger amounts of cash.
- draw_down 11y agoFamous people can make money simply off the interest that the general public has in them. However, I would encourage the author of this piece and anyone who reads it to consider this point much more broadly. For example Ronan Farrow and Chelsea Clinton were both paid hundreds of thousands by MSNBC for essentially nothing. I think it's rather telling that people would prefer to focus on someone like Nicki Minaj getting money in clubs, but that's just me.
- soundwave106 11y agoCelebrity culture has always been around, but in some ways it feels more noxious and gamed than it used to be. Maybe it's just me, I guess. But when I look at someone like the Kardashians, honestly the only real reason they got this opportunity to be "famous for nothing" is their Hollywood connections. They certainly didn't rise up on their acting ability. The celebritization of "lucky sperm club" members as you mention also bothers me. But, yeah, I don't get the article's attempt to drag other musicians / DJs / rappers into this. Well known musicians / performers going to a club and getting insane sums for simply performing? That's not news. Yes, today its EDM and rap in the club versus rock bands on the stage, but that's what is trendy now; big artists in the 1960s (your Beatles and whatnot) also got (2016 equivalent) six figure appearance fees too. One can argue about the merits of the winner-takes-all nature of the entertainment industry, but it's a little less "money for nothing" in that case. Lil Jon did have to spin a set.
- wehadfun 11y agoFor politicians, authors, popular business people: this is called convention speeches. For rappers, DJs, and Reality stars: this is called club appearances.
- ookblah 11y agothe average life of a nightclub is not very long, perhaps a few years and that's IF you're popular. as such, there's huge pressure to just create a lot of buzz and ride that wave until inevitably you become old hat. those people here talking about how it's convenient for laundering are missing this fact. you can point to the mega clubs in vegas as the few examples of those raking in money, but the vast majority of these clubs go out of business and make nothing. living in nyc there are handful of these big clubs that have been around for longer than a few years and even then, the popular ones have to "re-invent" themselves every few years to keep attendance up. the more common story is that doors open, and you get some mediocre attendance and basically just losing money hand over fist every week thereafter. people come and see that your establishment isn't that popular and the next week even less people come. momentum is crazy important and i can see paying thousands for a guest appearance even if you're losing money that specific week.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- drzaiusapelord 11y agoYeah this. You don't want to launder in a high regulatory, high crime, high profile, etc business. You want something like a car wash or laundromat on a small scale. Or, better yet, construction, which is notorious for its lax accounting. Clubs bring in a lot of scrutiny. The 70s mafia movies made them look for but serious criminals have so many other options that dealing with them nowadays seems stupid. Do you really want a drunk or a whore or a gangbanger to bring police into your laundering operation regularly?
- astrodust 11y ago> Clubs bring in a lot of scrutiny. One operated here illegally for about five years because every time there was a motion to shut them down they found another avenue to appeal. The legal system can move at a glacial pace at the best of times, and they were clever enough to slow it down even more. Five years is enough time to bank millions of dollars in legitimate profits and make even more on the side through more shady deals. I know that many of the clubs here juice up their profits by laundering and taking a cut of the drug trade in their bathrooms. They also make enormous amounts of cash legitimately which makes it hard to find out what profits are legal and which are illegal. For example if you charge $10 for a double shot, but the product only costs you (at most) $1, you're making 90% profit right out of the gate. If someone wants to launder some money, increase your shot sales by 20%. Pour out bottles if you have to just to make the numbers add up, it's not even hard. Very few of them are ever snared in legal issues because they have a lot of experience flying under the radar and knowing how to operate without getting into trouble. The number one cause for closing a club is either the place burned out, popularity waned, or in rare cases where there was a shooting which means a much tighter leash.
- throw7 11y agoahhh... it's "1 Oak", I was reading it as "10 AK". Silly me.
- peterbsmith 11y agoAnd Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ev Williams, Marc Benioff, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington, etc... get Millions of dollars per day. Within any one of those weeks, there is an hour or two where they're not doing much more labor than a Scott Disick or Nikki Minaj in a club.
- collyw 11y agoThe difference is that the people in the article are being paid just to turn up. The business people you mentioned are in charge of large organizations that are making them money while they aren't around.
- golergka 11y agoCelebrity culture of US is so bizzarelly different from the nightlife culture I know. I understand that some people just want to waste money sitting at the table with a celebrity, but why call this establishment a nightclub in the first place? Clubs are places to enjoy the music — without phones, without friends, without stupid conversations. Things describes in that article are the exact opposite of this.