The End of Rainbow Capitalism

In the past decade, the arrival of June meant that various corporate entities changed their logos to one with a rainbow theme, put out queer-inclusive advertising, and in general tried to market themselves as inclusive enterprises that support the LGBTQIA+ community and the social advancement that the community achieved.

June 2025, though, has been different. Most major corporations did away with dabbling in rainbow capitalism in favor of silence. Logo changes, a Pride Month mainstay in years past, did not materialize. Corporations stopped participating in Pride and stopped making any overtures to the LGBTQIA+ community. Thus, in a matter of a few years, the queer community has gone from one corporations had to support in order to appeal to their clientele to one that has been disposed of as a liability to their operations.

The corporate exodus from Pride isn’t anything new, of course; prominent brands rolled back on Pride Month activities back in 2024 as well. After facing backlash from conservative voices over their release of Pride Month merchandise in 2023, American retailer Target announced they will not be carrying their Pride merch in every store. Simultaneously, they also ended their partnership with GLSEN, a human rights organization that advocated for greater inclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in education. In a similar fashion, footwear brand Nike, for the first time since 1999, didn’t release a Pride collection in 2024. This came on the heels of a collaboration with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer, that sparked outrage back in 2023.

And who can forget the Bud Light controversy back in 2023? After brewing company Anheuser-Busch teamed up with Dylan Mulvaney to promote Bud Light to her audience, anti-trans groups organized a boycott of Bud Light and blasted the product and its parent company on social media. One particular post had country singer Kid Rock shoot at three cases of Bud Light beer with a gun. The boycott caused significant damage to their sales; Bud Light sales fell between 11-26% and Anheuser-Busch sales fell 1%. The brand has since never been able to retake the prime position in beer sales in the country, even despite attempts to backtrack and their lack of queer advertising since.

In short, systematic pressure placed upon corporations by right-wing activists means that these corporations, already an ambivalent partner solely out of personal gain, were frightened into pulling back their support to the queer community. In their greater efforts to malign the queer community that includes regressive legislation and targeted media campaigns, anti-LGBTQIA+ activists have also embarked on a journey to deprive the queer community of the corporate support it receives, especially during Pride Month. This, paired with anti-LGBTQIA+ politicians rising to power and using it against queer-allied entities, means that it has become untenable for corporations to support the LGBTQIA+ community visibly without taking a hit on their profits. In a world where profit reigns supreme over morals, most companies naturally chose to discard their support of the queer community instead of taking a stand.

But what consequence does this hold for Pride?

One thing that comes to mind is money. The bombastic events we’ve come to associate with Pride Month all cost money. The retreat of corporations from Pride, thus, also means the money they bring with them in the form of sponsorships disappears as well.

Let us take SF Pride as a case study. As of June 20, organizers were $180,000 short of their $2.3 million fundraising goal after major sponsors like Nissan and Anheuser-Busch pulled back from monetary commitments as part of their broader retreat from Pride. Though appeals have been made to the LGBTQIA+ community to contribute, SF Pride has only made around $50,000 from grassroots donations. Over the past few years, SF Pride has been running at a deficit, draining the finances of the organization by close to $1.6 million; they possess a mere $136,201 in assets now. 

Executive director Suzanne Ford, in conversation with The San Francisco Standard, noted that while they will be able to move forward with Pride 2025, she also noted that trouble looms ahead in 2026 if the organization isn’t able to make the money it lost from corporate pullback via grassroots donors.  This isn’t a problem unique to San Francisco, however. Pride events in New York City, Washington DC, St. Louis, and many other cities across the country are scrambling for money this year. 

One Pride organizer that saw relative success with crowdfunding, however, was the Minnesota Twin Cities Pride. After dropping Target, a long-time donor, as a sponsor after they ended their DEI policies, they were able to make more than double the $50,000 they were supposed to receive from Target. However, the loss of 15 corporate sponsors is proving to be a challenge to break through, and TC Pride is still $25,000 short of their fundraising goals. Executive director Andi Otto noted that while TC Pride is still going ahead, the funding shortfall will hamper the organization’s ability to work year-round through initiatives like providing free gender-affirming clothing. In short, the corporate withdrawal from Pride holds massive financial ramifications not just for flagship Pride Month events, but for year-round efforts as well.

The long-term ramification of this mass corporate flight from being associated with the LGBTQIA+ community extends beyond finances, though. In the wake of the 2024 US presidential election, companies also ended DEI policies designed to help queer people in the workplace. Rather obviously, such regression makes the workplace less welcoming to queer employees; the subsequent decline in queer visibility greatly hampers the progress made in terms of visibility and normalization. New content policies across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and X have resulted in more hate and misinformation against queer people spread across these platforms, further leading to their marginalization in the online space as well. Corporations have given in to anti-LGBTQIA+ activists and politicians and, in the process, created an online and offline world that is unsafe for queer people.

However, for many in the LGBTQIA+ community, this was a long time coming. Many saw rainbow capitalism as a facetious display of “support” to a community whom it was politically and economically expedient to support at that point of time. The moment it became hard and inconvenient to extend support, the moment when their support was needed most to fight anti-LGBTQIA+ attitudes, many of these corporations left the community out to dry. June 2025, thus, has turned out to be a time when corporate allyship was exposed for what it really was; an alliance of convenience whose foundation was solely profit-making. It was something we knew earlier too, though; companies only engage in queer-focused marketing in progressive Western nations, while keeping mum in conservative parts of Africa and Asia. The difference this year, however, is that these changes are closer to home and thus more difficult to ignore. This corporate exodus has yet again exposed an inconvenient truth; when push comes to shove, these companies will choose the path that is least turbulent. 

It would also not be amiss to say that corporate involvement in Pride has caused the movement to lose some focus. Pride is an event where queer people come together to fight the social stigma that often comes with being queer; it is supposed to be an event where the community celebrates the progress it has made and also further the fight for dignity and basic rights. The corporatization of Pride, while highly consequential in terms of visibility and finances, has contributed to a spectacle that is far removed from what Pride is supposed to be and instead is a vehicle for corporations to flex their “woke credentials” in safe territory while staying mum elsewhere. Though corporations breaking away from Pride proves to be an existential crisis to Pride events as we have come to know them, maybe this shall serve as a catalyst for change. Maybe, just maybe, we might be headed down the road of Pride festivities being spearheaded by a ragtag coalition of local allied businesses, activists, and attendees instead of a Pride festival which serves as glorified product placement for opportunistic corporations that otherwise show little regard to human rights in any form.

So what is next? As said before, June 2025 has been an eye-opener for many in that it showed us that corporate involvement in Pride Month events was never a certainty in the long term. However, all is not lost. The tireless efforts of activists and organizers means that this year’s Pride events will go on. However, if this lack of corporate sponsorship is the new norm, the queer community must come together to help make these events happen in the future. Even if corporate sponsors come back after the political landscape changes, the events of June 2025 must remain a cautionary tale for how human rights movements, including Pride, mustn’t extensively depend on fickle partners.