“THE magazine Portfolio has enumerated the vast amounts of money Britney Spears is worth, not just to herself but to others as well – about $US110 million ($116 million) to $US120 million annually to the struggling US economy. This is what Portfolio calls the Britney Industrial Complex.
Spears’s ubiquity goes without question. She gets the sort of coverage only dictators, potentates or absolute monarchs can command or even dream of. “Between January 2006 and July 2007, Britney was a cover subject of People, Us Weekly, In Touch, Life & Style, OK!, or Star a total of 175 times in just 78 weeks,” Portfolio tells us. And on Yahoo! she was the No. 1 search subject in six of the past seven years. Her single slip to No. 2 came in 2004, when she was bested by Paris Hilton – a dark year for us all.
Portfolio says a Las Vegas nightclub reportedly sold seats next to Spears’s table for $US50,000. Spears herself gets a reported $US250,000 to $US400,000 just to appear at an event, giving new meaning to Woody Allen’s observation that “90 percent of success in life is just showing up”.
Portfolio’s point is that Spears is big business – and ought to be viewed that way. She still makes oodles of money for herself – about $US9 million a year, the magazine says – and maybe has a personal fortune of about $US125 million. In a way, though, she is worth as much to others as she is to herself. One photo agency, X17, sold Spears pictures worth $US2.5 million in 2007, and while it did not do better with Britney than Britney did, it didn’t have to pay Kevin Federline $35,000 a month in child and ex-spouse support.
Portfolio’s Britney Industrial Complex illustrates the economy’s need for celebrities. Vast amounts of money can be made by manufacturing ones who appeal particularly to the young. Spears was once one of those, although at age 26 she has leapt that demographic boundary. Still, the breadth of her drawing power cannot be fully estimated. Portfolio’s concoction does not, for instance, measure her worth to the morning television shows. Nor can it measure what she is worth to us as a topic of common interest for our water-cooler moments. Even this story has, in a sense, exploited her.”
Source: brisbanetimes.com.au
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