The Sydney WorldPride 2023 impact report gives no figures for LGBTIQA+ owned businesses

The headline findings

Deloitte Access Economics, a partner of Sydney WorldPride 2023, prepared a study of the festival’s economic and social impact for its organisers, and published its findings in June 2023. The festival drew around 309,200 unique spectators and about one million attendances. It brought 103,800 visitors to Sydney, about 21,000 of them from overseas, and those visitors spent $228.7 million on tourism in New South Wales. Deloitte estimated that the festival contributed $185.6 million in value added to the state economy and supported 1,699 full time equivalent jobs.

Governments and sponsors rely on figures of this kind when deciding whether to support an event, and the figures measure the total benefit without showing how it was distributed among the businesses involved.

The business survey and transaction data

The report included a survey of local businesses, nearly half of which reported higher revenue than in the previous month. Seventy three per cent agreed that the festival helped them publicise their commitment to LGBTIQA+ inclusion, 69 per cent said it brought more visitors, and 67 per cent said it exposed them to new customers. Card transaction data from Airwallex showed an 11.9 per cent increase in transactions at businesses that supported the festival, compared with 4.1 per cent for other businesses.

The business survey had 45 respondents, which is a small base for any general conclusion, and the businesses it describes are those that supported the festival, a group that is distinct from businesses owned by LGBTIQA+ people, since a bar, a hotel or a retailer can fly the flag, decorate its windows and host an event regardless of who owns it.

The absence of data on ownership

The report lists increased community pride and engagement among LGBTIQA+ businesses as an expected benefit, but the published report provides no breakdown of the festival’s economic benefits by LGBTIQA+ business ownership, and it states that it presents aggregated data. Whether the underlying surveys asked about ownership is not public. National statistics cannot fill the gap either, because, as the first article in this series showed, Australia’s business data does not identify LGBTIQA+ ownership.

Pride is the period in which LGBTIQA+ communities are most commercially visible, and spending during it at inclusive businesses that are not LGBTIQA+ owned benefits the host city without adding to the trade of LGBTIQA+ owned businesses. Festival results would be more informative if the two were reported separately.

Implications for owners and organisers

For owners, the card data supports only a cautious conclusion, since businesses that visibly supported the festival recorded a stronger increase in transactions than those that did not, although the data does not show that participation caused the increase. An owner deciding whether to host an event, partner with the program or simply be easy to find when visitors are looking can treat the result as grounds for considering participation, without assuming a guaranteed return.

For organisers and the governments that fund them, a single question on ownership in an impact study’s business survey would show how many responding businesses are LGBTIQA+ owned, although it would not show what share of the festival’s economic impact reached them. Measuring that share would require an agreed definition of ownership, spending data, a sample representative of the businesses involved and safeguards for participating owners. Future impact studies of Pride events could include these elements from the outset, so that the value Pride generates and the share captured by LGBTIQA+ owned businesses are measured separately.

Sources

1. Deloitte Access Economics, The social and economic impact of Sydney WorldPride 2023, June 2023
2. Deloitte, Economic and social impact of Sydney WorldPride 2023

Source pages last checked 19 October 2026.