Raphael Stevens

Numerous LGBTQ+ groups are facing six-figure sponsorship deficits for their annual Pride celebrations, forcing some to modify their festival plans.
Corporations mostly cite economic concerns for pulling back on sponsorships, but Pride groups also note they’re seeing a hostile political climate for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Some LGBTQ+ organizations are reconsidering their dependence on corporate dollars and pursuing alternative funding streams.

Revelers attend the annual LGBTQ+ Capital Pride parade in Washington D.C., U.S., June 8, 2024.
Leah Millis | Reuters

Companies that were once loud and proud in supporting LGBTQ+ community celebrations are pulling back.
LGBTQ+ Pride festivals across the country have faced significant sponsorship challenges this year, with some losing corporate partners that collectively provided six-figure donations. As a result, organizations say they’ve had to modify their programming, pivot to other funding sources and reconsider their dependencies on corporate dollars.

Many companies have cited economic concerns as their impetus to delay or exit partnerships with Pride groups. But LGBTQ+ group leaders also noted an increasingly hostile climate for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that has prompted some businesses to rethink their support. In turn, Pride organizations are seeking clarity on how much their values still align with those of their corporate contributors.
“For this many companies to be dropping off, I think, points to that we’re in a different political environment than we have been maybe in a long, long time,” San Francisco Pride executive director Suzanne Ford told CNBC.

Financial challenges

Many LGBTQ+ groups consider certain corporations to be longtime partners, but organizers said they often ink one-year deals that are negotiated in the months before the annual Pride celebrations. That leaves them vulnerable if once-reliable companies decide to withhold their dollars, and several organizations said they are facing sponsorship deficits that weigh on budgets and plans for festivals in the summer.
Among the largest shortfalls, Seattle Pride and New York City Pride say they have to make up for $350,000 deficits, and San Francisco Pride and Minnesota’s Twin Cities Pride say they are each facing a $200,000 cut.
Some festivals have named which previous sponsors aren’t returning, while others said they are keeping that information private to avoid burning bridges.

San Francisco Pride’s Ford said Anheuser-Busch, Comcast, Diageo and Nissan have told the organization that they are not sponsoring the festival this year. All were previously longtime partners, Ford said.
The companies gave a variety of reasons for the change.
A Comcast representative said the company is participating in other Pride events in San Francisco and is supporting Pride parades in California in Oakland, Sacramento and Silicon Valley. A Diageo representative said the company will appear at Pride events across the country through its Smirnoff brand this year. A Nissan spokesperson said in a statement that the automaker will not sponsor any Pride festivals this year as it reviews all marketing and sales spending. Anheuser-Busch didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Washington, D.C.-based Capital Pride Alliance, which is organizing the biannual, global WorldPride celebration this year, said Comcast and Deloitte had regularly supported the group’s Pride festival but declined to do so this year, while Booz Allen Hamilton initially committed to sponsoring the event before later withdrawing.
A Booz Allen Hamilton spokesperson said in a statement that the defense giant’s sponsorship decisions do not reflect a pullback in support for employees.
Ryan Bos, Capital Pride Alliance’s executive director, said economic uncertainty, safety and security issues, and fear of losing federal funding have all discouraged companies from returning as sponsors. He highlighted President Donald Trump’s executive order ordering government agencies to investigate and sue companies supporting DEI.
“The sad thing is corporations have long been the first to step into our corner,” Bos said, citing companies’ support of domestic partner benefits and LGBTQ+ employment programs. “The fact that some are questioning their commitment now during this uncertain time is very disheartening, hurtful and frustrating for many.”

Parade participants are seen marching during the 2024 Kentuckiana Pride Parade on June 15, 2024 in Louisville, Kentucky. 
Stephen J. Cohen | Getty Images

Ford said the White House’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and executive orders targeting transgender people have impacted corporate America.
“We’ve all seen the culture wars playing out as far as how corporations respond, and I think this is part and parcel of that movement,” she said.
The White House didn’t respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Even corporations that are sticking with Pride festivals have reduced their support. Denver Pride’s returning sponsors have pared down their contributions by 62% on average, according to Natalie Zanoni, interim CEO of LGBTQ+ organization The Center on Colfax. The center organizes the Denver Pride celebration, which faces a total deficit of $230,000.
Festivals are also still in wait-and-see mode. St. Pete Pride president Byron Green-Calisch said several sponsors had asked the Tampa Bay, Florida-area organization if they could discuss sponsorships closer to April rather than the usual period beginning in January. As of late March, St. Pete Pride said it had achieved 55% of its fundraising goal, compared with the usual 80% to 90% at this time of year.
Seattle Pride executive director Patti Hearn said the group expects about $400,000 in sponsorships this year, compared with its total budget of $1.5 million. While she said the organization will be able to pull off its planned events this year, it would need to change its programming in the future if its $350,000 deficit became permanent.
Corporate sponsors are responsible for 75% of Twin Cities Pride’s budget, executive director Andi Otto told CNBC. As a result of sponsorship losses, the Minnesota organization had to cut a performance stage for the upcoming festival and will have to reduce its year-round programming, Otto said.
Not all businesses are taking a step back from festival sponsorships. Several groups said Delta Air Lines, among others, remains a strong supporter of their events. Others said small businesses have been steadfast.

Reevaluating partnerships

Pride organizations are also reexamining their relationships with sponsors that have rolled back DEI policies or visible support for their communities, further complicating their financial outlook.
Seattle Pride hasn’t engaged with previous sponsor Boeing this year, Hearn said, because she had a sense that the aerospace giant didn’t align with the organization’s values and would decline to return as a festival partner. Boeing reportedly shut down its DEI team in November, according to Bloomberg. The company didn’t respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Cincinnati Pride development director Jake Hitch said the Ohio group has rejected sponsorships from previous partners this year based on their nondiscrimination policies, involvement in the LGBTQ+ community and support for employees.
“With everything happening politically and in 2025 that is consistently coming against our community, we thought, what better time to really reset our expectations and align with our community on what they want to see?” Hitch said.
Twin Cities Pride dropped Target, which had sponsored its festival for over 15 years, after looking into the retailer’s DEI policy changes announced in late January. Changes to its supplier diversity commitment, community representation principles and participation in external DEI surveys concerned Otto enough for him to refuse the $50,000 sponsorship offer, he said.
“It did not feel right for my community to accept that money,” Otto said.
Target didn’t respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Pride Month merchandise is displayed at a Target store on May 31, 2023 in San Francisco, California. 
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

San Francisco Pride’s Ford said the group no longer has a relationship with previous sponsor Meta, in part due to its changes to fact-checking policy but also because Meta staffers who had previously worked with SF Pride had left the company in the past couple of years.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement that since 2024, the company has allowed local employee resource groups to make their own decisions on Pride sponsorships.
Some organizations have maintained productive relationships with corporations that have modified their DEI efforts, although understanding the policy changes can present its own challenge.
Dave Wait, chairperson of Detroit’s Motor City Pride, said some community members were spreading misinformation on social media about a sponsor shutting down its LGBTQ+ health care services, and that Motor City Pride had to clear it up with the company before signing the sponsorship deal for this year.
Twin Cities Pride’s Otto said although festival sponsor 3M has removed several DEI-related pages from its website, the industrial giant explained to the organization that it was only changing the language, not the substance of its DEI policies. 3M did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Lowe’s had sponsored Charlotte Pride’s festival and parade in North Carolina for nine years, but in August the home retailer ended its support for parades amid other DEI policy reversals. Lowe’s has pivoted to funding the LGBTQ+ group’s job fair and scholarship and internship programs, Charlotte Pride managing director Meredith Thompson told CNBC.
Some community members spoke out against the decision to continue working with Lowe’s, Thompson said, but she didn’t hesitate to do so because of their previous relationship.
“My attitude is, we need our corporate sponsors and we meet them where they are,” Thompson said.
Lowe’s did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Some national corporations that have curtailed DEI efforts are still showing up as sponsors through local affiliates and operators. McDonald’s, which retired numerous diversity goals in January, has regional operators sponsoring WorldPride and Charlotte Pride. And although Anheuser-Busch is not sponsoring San Francisco Pride or Pride St. Louis this year, Bud Light distributor Adams Beverages is returning as a sponsor for Charlotte Pride.

Diversifying funding

While LGBTQ+ organizations have long debated the role that corporations should play in Pride celebrations, this year has amplified the idea that Pride groups should rely less on businesses.
Several groups have turned to grassroots campaigns. Twin Cities Pride started a crowdfunding effort to help compensate for dropping Target, and it eventually raised over $110,000. Stonewall Columbus has received $8,500 in donations, Cincinnati Pride has netted over $43,000 and San Francisco Pride has fundraised $35,000, all through crowdfunding.
Green-Calisch of St. Pete Pride said the group will focus more on community donations moving forward and will also increase its year-round presence so that donors understand the work that the organization does beyond Pride Month.
“We are the people. This is about people power and being able to use your dollar to advocate,” Green-Calisch said.
Local governments have also grown more involved in some festivals. Stonewall Columbus executive director Densil Porteous said the Ohio-based group has received increased support from Franklin County, Columbus’ home county, to help make up for the organization’s $96,000 sponsorship deficit.
Pride Northwest executive director Debra Porta said the group is “very intentional” about not overly depending on corporate sponsors for Portland Pride, with its top sponsorship level totaling just $15,000. Other festivals offer sponsorship packages with costs that stretch well beyond $100,000.
Pride groups say that above all they’re focused on their communities, not sponsors. Although some festivals have ticketed programs or charge for entry, many organizations stress the importance of making Pride as accessible as possible.
“We never want to put the burden back on our community, because this is supposed to be their celebration,” Twin Cities Pride’s Otto said.
Disclosure: Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC. More

Major carriers are turning to off-peak fare sales and cutting excess capacity in the second half of the year.
Airfare dropped in March, according to the latest inflation read.

Passengers arrive at the American Airlines terminal at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco on April 24, 2025.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Is a recession brewing in row 33?
Airline CEOs this month warned Wall Street that passengers’ appetite for domestic trips is coming in lighter than they had hoped when they set forecasts high at the start of 2025.

On a series of earnings calls, they said the reasons range from President Donald Trump’s whipsawing tariff policies to volatile markets and, most notably, economic uncertainty.
“Nobody really relishes uncertainty when they’re talking about what they could do on a vacation and spend hard-earned dollars,” American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said on a quarterly earnings call on Thursday. 
That means airlines have too many seats on their hands — again. Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines said they will cut back their capacity growth plans after what they still hope to be a strong summer travel season.
Delta, Southwest, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines pulled their 2025 financial outlooks this month, saying the U.S. economy is too tough to predict right now. United Airlines provided two outlooks, one if if the U.S. falls into a recession and said it expects to be profitable in either scenario.
That is leading to cheaper plane tickets. Airfare fell 5.3% in March from last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data. Easter, a peak travel period that coincides with many school vacations, fell in March of last year, though fares also dropped 4% in February this year.

Adding to pressure, executives said, is slower-than-expected growth from corporate travel, which is facing the same challenges many households are. Government travel plunged, too, amid the Trump administration’s cost cuts and mass layoffs this year.
“If uncertainty pops up, the first thing that goes away is corporate travel,” said Conor Cunningham a travel and transportation analyst at Melius Research .
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said on April 9 that corporate travel was trending up 10% year on year at the start of 2025, but that growth has since flattened. 
Business travel is key to major carriers because those customers are less price-sensitive and often book last minute when tickets are likely to be more expensive.
The overhang of seats in the domestic skies is forcing airlines to cut prices to fill their planes.
Alaska Airlines warned Wednesday that weaker-than-expected demand will likely eat into second-quarter earnings. Chief Financial Officer Shane Tackett told CNBC that demand has not plunged, but the carrier has lowered some fares to fill seats.
“The fares aren’t as strong as they were in the fourth quarter of last year and coming into January and first part of February,” Tackett said in an interview Wednesday. “Demand is still quite high for the industry, but it’s just not at the peak that we all anticipated might continue coming out of last year.”
At the front of the plane, executives say demand is holding up far better, while U.S.-based customers are still flying overseas in droves.
But lingering concerns are still weighing on the industry.
“Certainty will restore the economy, and I think it will restore it pretty quickly,” Isom said.

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The CEO of Argentina’s MercadoLibre sees big opportunity for Latin America in the U.S.-China trade war.
Marcos Galperin is Argentina’s richest person with an $8.7 billion fortune by Forbes’ estimate.
Galperin told CNBC’s Robert Frank he believes there will be a “permanent shift” in U.S.-China trade relations.

MercadoLibre CEO Marcos Galperin

The CEO of Argentina’s MercadoLibre — often called the Amazon of Latin America — sees big opportunity for Latin America in the U.S.-China trade war.
“If Latin America plays its cards well, I think could benefit from this volatility,” MercadoLibre CEO and founder Marcos Galperin told CNBC’s Robert Frank on the sidelines of Riverwood Capital Management’s LatAm Tech Forum in Miami.

Galperin is Argentina’s richest person with an $8.7 billion fortune by Forbes’ estimate.

Shares of MercadoLibre, an e-commerce and payments firm, have surged by nearly 30% this year, while Amazon, facing massive exposure to President Donald Trump’s wide-sweeping tariffs, is down 15%.
Galperin told CNBC that Latin American firms, especially in Mexico, stand to gain from escalating tensions between U.S. and one if its chief trade partners. He noted that many American companies have already moved their manufacturing operations to Mexico from China and other Asian countries.
Mexico has a free trade agreement with the U.S. that means some imports from the country are exempt from Trump’s tariffs of as much as 25% on Mexican goods.
The U.S. president has hit China hardest, however, with a 145% tariff rate on Chinese goods.

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Galperin said Friday he believes there will be a “permanent shift” in U.S.-China trade relations.
“I don’t know how it’s going to end, but I think the situation where everything was manufactured in China and was consumed in the U.S., and China bought T-bills and in a way financed that, I think that dynamic is kind of over,” he said.
Argentina, Galperin’s home country, has a long history of protectionist policies including high tariffs. Argentine president Javier Milei, who has described Trump as an ally, has slashed tariffs and import restrictions since his inauguration in late 2023.
“I think what Milei is doing is great for Argentina,” Galperin said of the free-market reforms.
However, he warned there will be growing pains.
“I hope it works,” he said. “Changes are painful, and I hope that people have the patience and the time to give him to see that these changes in the medium and long term really create benefits for for everyone.” More

Novo Nordisk scored a huge legal victory that largely restricts compounding pharmacies from marketing or selling cheaper, unapproved versions of the drugmaker’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. 
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman denied the Outsourcing Facilities Association’s bid for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the FDA from taking action against its members for making copies of semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy. 
Patients flocked to those copycats when Ozempic and Wegovy were in short supply over the last two years due to skyrocketing demand, or if they didn’t have insurance coverage for the costly treatments. 

Flags with the logos of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk, maker of the blockbuster diabetes and weight-loss treatments Ozempic and Wegovy are pictures while the company presents the annual report at Novo Nordisk in Bagsvaerd, Denmark, on February 5, 2025. 
Mads Claus Rasmussen | Afp | Getty Images

Novo Nordisk scored a huge legal victory that largely restricts compounding pharmacies from marketing or selling cheaper, unapproved versions of the drugmaker’s blockbuster weight loss drug Wegovy and diabetes treatment Ozempic. 
A federal judge in Texas late Thursday rejected a bid by compounding pharmacies to keep making copies of Ozempic and Wegovy while a legal challenge over the shortage of those drugs unfolds. That came in response to a February lawsuit from a compounding trade group against the Food and Drug Administration’s determination that the active ingredient in those drugs, semaglutide, is no longer in shortage in the U.S.

Patients flocked to the cheaper copycats when Ozempic and Wegovy were in short supply over the last two years due to skyrocketing demand, or if they didn’t have insurance coverage for the costly treatments. 
During FDA-declared shortages, pharmacists can legally make compounded versions of brand-name medications. Many telehealth companies, such as Hims & Hers, also offered those copycats. But drugmakers and some health experts have pushed back against the practice because the FDA does not approve compounded drugs, which are essentially custom-made copies prescribed by a doctor to meet a specific patient’s needs. 
“We are pleased the court has rejected the compounders’ attempts to undermine FDA’s data-based decision that the shortage” of semaglutide is resolved, said Steve Benz, Novo Nordisk’s corporate vice president, legal and U.S. general counsel, in a statement. 
“Patient safety remains a top priority for Novo Nordisk and the extensive nationwide legal actions we have taken to protect Americans from the health risks posed by illegitimate ‘semaglutide’ drugs are working,” he said, referring to the company’s more than 100 lawsuits against compounding pharmacies and other entities across 32 states. 
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman specifically denied the Outsourcing Facilities Association’s bid for a preliminary injunction that would have prevented the FDA from taking action against its members for making copies of semaglutide. 

That decision upholds the FDA’s previous determination that the semaglutide shortage in the U.S. is over and means the FDA can now immediately go after so-called 503A pharmacies that are making compounded versions of semaglutide according to individual prescriptions for a specific patient.
Those pharmacies are largely regulated by states rather than the FDA.
The decision also means the FDA can start targeting federally regulated 503B pharmacies, which manufacture compounded drugs in bulk with or without prescriptions, after May 22. The agency’s actions can include product seizures and warning letters to pharmacies. 

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The decision on Thursday follows another win for Novo Nordisk. A different federal judge in Texas earlier this week ruled in favor of the drugmaker against a 503A pharmacy, MediOak Pharmacy, permanently prohibiting the business from marketing or selling compounded semaglutide.
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have aggressively cracked down on compounding pharmacies over the last two years as they benefit from the soaring popularity of their weight loss and diabetes drugs.
Eli Lilly has gone through a similar legal process with tirzepatide, the active ingredient in its weight loss drug Zepbound and diabetes treatment Mounjaro. The FDA declared the U.S. shortage of tirzepatide over last year, prompting the same compounding trade group to sue the FDA over the drug. 
In March, a federal judge denied the compounding group’s request for a preliminary injunction on the FDA’s enforcement against its members for making copies of Mounjaro and Zepbound. The compounding group has appealed.

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