Liverpool pride cancelled

[LadyBracknellsHandbagg]

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Why do Pride events need big sponsorship deals? I thought it was originally about gay and lesbian people pretty much having a big street party, why does it need a huge amount of money in order for it to take place?

What a shame.

Liverpool's Pride event and march are cancelled for 2025, with the organisers citing "significant financial and organisational challenges". The organisers said they "listened to the community" and took the decision to cut ties with sponsors Barclays, which created further issues with staging the annual event.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/all-about/liverpool-pride

I imagine the sponsorship pays for security and logistical costs which is very expensive when you're talking about a big event with huge crowds. These things won't be organised on a shoestring and goodwill as they probably were 30-40 years ago.

They usually seem to have band stages as part of it, not cheap to hire, set up, get suitable sound engineers and bands etc.

Road closures can cost a fortune. Add policing fees and it can be thousands. That what the sponsorship would probably pay for

There may be less appetite for large crowd events in Liverpool at the moment, given the appalling recent event at the football parade. The logistics around safety, and reassuring attendees. would be more vexed than usual.

There's a little bit more to it. The main organiser, who was an actual events manager, quit a few months ago and the org went to a volunteer-led model. Andi Herring basically founded and ran the thing previously. Then those vols voted to end their sponsorship with Barclays a few weeks ago, which has been a LONG running argument. ...I tried to link to an open letter but MN is blocking me - google it.

The cancellation notice on FB said it was about trans, and it likely was, but it's also been a long running debate for years. A lot of people are against corporate Pride, for all kinds of different reasons.

Anyway now they've no money and no skills, so it was inevitable, really. It's a really massive job, organising a city centre street parade and free festival, especially given the recent goings on.

So far as I know, there's not any gay or lesbian people actually running the thing any more. It's trans, bi+ and allies. (Willing to be wrong there - I haven't researched this, just gossip!)

Just a totally unrecognisable event from original Pride and even the London marches I went on in the mid 1980s.

Read a bit more about this earlier after I saw it briefly reported. The open letter mentioned by @Kelim was a very recognisable example of its type, with a frankly jaw dropping bit in about wanting to support queer Palestinians and how Israel didn't even allow same sex marriage, therefore Barclays as genocide supporters should be ditched at the sponsor. It dates from summer 2024 so before the Supreme Court decision, though I think it's pretty easy to guess what view the letter signatories - all 171 of them - would hold on that. Anyhow, Liverpool Pride themselves had recently condemned the Supreme Court ruling and criticised Barclays for saying they'd deny trans women their rights to use female toilets - or that they'd obey the law, to put it another way. They announced they were dropping Barclays as sponsor. That is of course their decision to make but now it seems the festival can't go ahead without the funding that a corporate sponsor brings. Very much FAFO.

Many Pride boards have been captured by TRAs determined to use them as an activist instrument. That's not in itself remarkable. In the past Pride had been used to promote gay and lesbian rights. But its tactics were assimilationist and typically stayed away from partisan politics, i.e. specific policies were promoted or decried, but anyone from any party was welcome to show up and show support. In practice, of course, that meant that very few if any homophobes participated in Pride, typically limiting their activities to protesting the events.

The new approach by these TRA captured boards has been to lash out at politicians by banning political parties and by assuming an antagonistic posture toward companies sponsoring the events. Of course that has made the events too toxic for many companies (and some charities) to associate with, and certainly has reduced the perceived marketing value of sponsoring them. It's just the latest in the long line of unhinged, self-defeating, toxic activism that that TRAs are famous for.

There are not a few members of the homosexual community (though it's perhaps still a minority of them who have peaked) that are happy for various local prides crash and burn, along with organizations like Stonewall. There really is no possibility of winning them back from TRAs and the media is unwilling to distinguish between the (sometime conflicting) concerns the LGB vs. TQ+ so long as major TRA captured organizations continue to claim they speak for the whole community. If these organizations fail it will allow gays and lesbians to establish same-sex rights organizations to promote there cause and for TRAs to fight for their rights under their own banner.

I believe that the organisers fell out with Barclays, because Barclays said they support the Supreme Court ruling re sex and gender (ie Barclays intend to operate within the law). Unfortunately, the Pride team thought that either 1) Barclays would come crawling back or 2) other sponsors would step in. Neither has happened.

What a fantastic example of FAFO 😂😂😂

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.

It seems indictaive of what it has become that no one said, well, maybe we could do something a little more scaled back? Like a picnic in the park at a bandstand, or rent some sort of conference place for a one night event, or have neighbourhoods do little events.

The scale of Pride in the last few years is so huge - in the city closest to me, my parents, who live close to downtown, leave for that day because tehy wouldn't really be able to get out of their house. The street that theirs leads into is completely shut down and just a mass of bodies, and it bleeds into all the surrounding streets. And the events go all week, multiple a night, and to a lesser extent all month.

Was it free in Liverpool? You've had to pay to enter Manchester Pride for years now. Not the parade itself obviously - but the main village area where all the bands perform

Thanks for all your replies, it seems it will give the TRA’s something else to moan and complain about, another opportunity to claim some sort of marginalisation and discrimination, with no self awareness whatsoever.