2025 NYC Pride Parade sees noticeable drop in visible corporate sponsorships amid DEI backlash

“It hurts a little bit. Like certain companies…I really feel like they did care for a long time, especially with stuff like their trans healthcare, stuff like that. And now that they’re kind of pulling back on that DEI, it hurts. It feels like a betrayal,” they said.

Companies rolling back

According to a survey from Gravity Research, 39% of corporations are scaling back external Pride Month engagements this year. That’s a double digit increase from last year when only 9% of corporations were changing their Pride plan.

An NBC report also found that organizers of several of the country’s premier Pride celebrations lost an estimated $200,000 to $350,000 funding from corporate sponsors this year.

“We went out and we surveyed a group of corporate executives, 49 executives, to be specific, in the run up to pride month,” Gravity Research President Luke Hartig said.

“65% of our respondents said that they feared backlash in some way to their pride engagement, and when we asked them specifically what stakeholders are driving your adjustments to pride? Overwhelmingly, the biggest drivers of those adjustments were the Trump administration and conservative activists and consumers,” Hartig told NBC News.

Additionally, Gravity research found that no companies surveyed in 2025 reported an increase in pride investments.

Hartig said many of these large corporations are continuing internal DEI efforts, but have lowered their public visibility for supporting identity based months, like February’s Black History Month and June’s Pride, due to fear of backlash.