
Money for Nothing: The Lucrative World of Club Appearances - JackPoach
http://www.gq.com/story/how-celebs-get-paid-for-club-appearances
======
ZeroGravitas
As I started reading, I was curious about the business model that would allow
the clubs to spend this much money, on the basis that they had to recoup it
and more within a single night.

They kind of answer that near the end, but I'm still left a bit befuddled.
Apparently there's multiple(!) groups of people who will pay $25,000 dollars
minimum to sit at a table near Nikki Minaj for an hour?

I can understand (if not condone) the birthday party thing, where you spend
millions to get someone famous at your party, as by doing so you are saying "I
have so many millions, I can do this ridiculous thing, or buy a famous
painting, and still be richer than you". But it seems weird that it's a
booming and widespread business model.

~~~
sjtgraham
You're missing the point of these night clubs. Nearly all of them are owned
by, or involve criminal gangs because they're a fantastically convenient and
efficient way to clean dirty money. Buy a jeroboam of champagne wholesale for
$300, sell in night club for $30,000 or more.

~~~
gaadd33
Any info available about that? Most of the clubs I know of are affiliated with
large corporate entities like Wynn or MGM. The highest grossing clubs are all
run by the Tao Group.

Also where can you get a jeroboam of Veuve Clicquot or Dom Perignon for $300
wholesale? I'd love a link or more info since I would buy a bunch for parties.

~~~
sjtgraham
Do you live in Vegas? Go to London, LA, or NYC and you'll find popular
nightspots are not corporate affairs.

I didn't specify brand. £230 Moet Jeroboam (including 20% VAT) -
[http://www.drinksupermarket.com/moet-chandon-imperial-
brut-n...](http://www.drinksupermarket.com/moet-chandon-imperial-brut-nv-
champagne-3ltr-jeroboam)

~~~
gaadd33
Are there places that charge $30K for non Dom Perignon/Armand de Brignac
champagne? I think at Marquee (NYC) you can get something larger than a
jeroboam of Veuve for $30K. (Probably a methuselah or salmanzar since I think
they keep one of them on hand for all their venues)

What top grossing nightclubs in NYC aren't corporate affairs? All the top ones
I can think of are; Tao, 1Oak, Lavo, PHD, VIP Room, etc. I'm sure there are
smaller ones that are purely independent affairs but they aren't doing
10M+/year in revenue.

~~~
anon827495
Drais in LV had $250k bottles opening weekend in 2014

------
ookblah
the average life of a nightclub is not very long, perhaps a few years and
that's IF you're popular. as such, there's huge pressure to just create a lot
of buzz and ride that wave until inevitably you become old hat.

those people here talking about how it's convenient for laundering are missing
this fact. you can point to the mega clubs in vegas as the few examples of
those raking in money, but the vast majority of these clubs go out of business
and make nothing. living in nyc there are handful of these big clubs that have
been around for longer than a few years and even then, the popular ones have
to "re-invent" themselves every few years to keep attendance up.

the more common story is that doors open, and you get some mediocre attendance
and basically just losing money hand over fist every week thereafter. people
come and see that your establishment isn't that popular and the next week even
less people come. momentum is crazy important and i can see paying thousands
for a guest appearance even if you're losing money that specific week.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Yeah this. You don't want to launder in a high regulatory, high crime, high
profile, etc business. You want something like a car wash or laundromat on a
small scale. Or, better yet, construction, which is notorious for its lax
accounting.

Clubs bring in a lot of scrutiny. The 70s mafia movies made them look for but
serious criminals have so many other options that dealing with them nowadays
seems stupid. Do you really want a drunk or a whore or a gangbanger to bring
police into your laundering operation regularly?

~~~
astrodust
> Clubs bring in a lot of scrutiny.

One operated here illegally for about five years because every time there was
a motion to shut them down they found another avenue to appeal. The legal
system can move at a glacial pace at the best of times, and they were clever
enough to slow it down even more.

Five years is enough time to bank millions of dollars in legitimate profits
and make even more on the side through more shady deals.

I know that many of the clubs here juice up their profits by laundering and
taking a cut of the drug trade in their bathrooms. They also make enormous
amounts of cash legitimately which makes it hard to find out what profits are
legal and which are illegal.

For example if you charge $10 for a double shot, but the product only costs
you (at most) $1, you're making 90% profit right out of the gate. If someone
wants to launder some money, increase your shot sales by 20%. Pour out bottles
if you have to just to make the numbers add up, it's not even hard.

Very few of them are ever snared in legal issues because they have a lot of
experience flying under the radar and knowing how to operate without getting
into trouble. The number one cause for closing a club is either the place
burned out, popularity waned, or in rare cases where there was a shooting
which means a much tighter leash.

~~~
tw04
Why pour it out? Sell the bottles for cash to another party.

~~~
astrodust
Presumably it's to avoid suspicion and liability. Re-selling is strictly
forbidden by the rules here, and losing your liquor license is the worst
possible thing to happen to a club.

To put it in perspective: If there's a report of using drugs in the bathrooms
nothing will happen, it takes too much police work to amount to anything, but
a single incident of alcohol leaving the premises can get you shut down.
They're super strict about this.

------
avs733
I have a personal rule to never trust anyone who speaks in the third
person...this article seems to validate that quite well.

From another perspective though, is GQ effectively proposing Paris Hilton as a
disruptive innovation? I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the
business of recursive celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich). I honestly
wonder what scholars 2-300 years from now will have to say about the
development of reality television from Survivor to The Simple Life/Paris
Hilton to the Kardashians to whatever will come next...

and I cannot believe I just wrote this on HN

~~~
Touche
> I kind of except that...she effectively initiated the business of recursive
> celebrity (rich begets famous begets rich).

Wait, why is the current royal family rich/famous?

~~~
wutbrodo
They were better at killing people+politics way back in the day.

~~~
Touche
Their ancestors, yeah. So I see no different scenario than the rich beget
famous recursion we're talking about.

~~~
kazagistar
Its the much older and traditional "children of rich are rich, children of
famous are famous".

------
brianbreslin
This isn't surprising. How else does a single night club in Miami pull in over
$70M a year (LIV at fontainebleu hotel). For every 25k appearance there are 10
that night paying $5k each for bottle service nearby, and then another 1000
paying $100 for booze.

~~~
jeffbarr
I was at LIV last week (an unpaid appearance :-)). Two drinks + tax + tip came
out to $48.

~~~
nxzero
Pay for the drinks, stay for the experience... ;-)

~~~
jeffbarr
We did, until 3 AM. It was well worth the price.

~~~
AndrewUnmuted
It's great to see high-profile Amazonians practicing the Leadership Principles
in their personal lives. Frugality, Highest Standards, and Learn & Be Curious
all in one night of partying!

------
breitling
"Without Ray J's dick, there's no Scott Disick. Without O. J. Simpson, there
is no business for this family.”

Just wow.

~~~
pc86
Certainly crude, but it's not wrong.

------
draw_down
Famous people can make money simply off the interest that the general public
has in them. However, I would encourage the author of this piece and anyone
who reads it to consider this point much more broadly.

For example Ronan Farrow and Chelsea Clinton were both paid hundreds of
thousands by MSNBC for essentially nothing. I think it's rather telling that
people would prefer to focus on someone like Nicki Minaj getting money in
clubs, but that's just me.

~~~
soundwave106
Celebrity culture has always been around, but in some ways it feels more
noxious and gamed than it used to be.

Maybe it's just me, I guess. But when I look at someone like the Kardashians,
honestly the only real reason they got this opportunity to be "famous for
nothing" is their Hollywood connections. They certainly didn't rise up on
their acting ability. The celebritization of "lucky sperm club" members as you
mention also bothers me.

But, yeah, I don't get the article's attempt to drag other musicians / DJs /
rappers into this. Well known musicians / performers going to a club and
getting insane sums for simply performing? That's not news. Yes, today its EDM
and rap in the club versus rock bands on the stage, but that's what is trendy
now; big artists in the 1960s (your Beatles and whatnot) also got (2016
equivalent) six figure appearance fees too.

One can argue about the merits of the winner-takes-all nature of the
entertainment industry, but it's a little less "money for nothing" in that
case. Lil Jon _did_ have to spin a set.

------
kriro
And here I am thinking it is insane that people pay for pictures of people on
TV shows at comic con and the like. I have quite a few friends who are
traveling the con circuit and always thought it was a strange secondary job
market where ex stars get appearance fees and people pay for money (guys like
some random Star Wars extra).

Guess that's just small potatoes.

------
Synaesthesia
This is some next level 0.1% shit.

~~~
dandermotj
I think we're hitting the .00001% here. Such a bizarre reality.

~~~
nkurz
Actually, I think .1% might be right. .00001% is much, much richer than you
are probably thinking.

99.9th percentile US net worth is about 30 million:
[http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/20...](http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/feds/2015/files/2015030pap.pdf)

Arbitrarily assuming a 5% return on that, that's 1.5 million dollars a year,
which is about $5K per day.

Go out to the club with a few of your .1% friends, and you are right in the
$25K per table ballpark while still staying within budget.

------
wehadfun
For politicians, authors, popular business people: this is called convention
speeches.

For rappers, DJs, and Reality stars: this is called club appearances.

------
tomsun
I don't know what I'm more sad about in this article, the fact that so much
economic activity is dedicated to boast oneself's social status by paying to
gain proximity to celebrities, or that these parties are insidious to a
celebrity's mental and physical health.

------
apalmer
Isnt this just advertising? I dont really understand how this is any different
from other forms of celebrity endorsements such as basketball players pitching
nike's. These guys faces are even on the flyers to the parties.

~~~
aetherson
I think that there's a sense that, like, if you go and endorse a Nike shoe,
okay, you might get paid a lot of money, but you still go and do a photo-shoot
and maybe spend a frustrating day being filmed doing a jump-shot and have the
director saying, "Okay, but can you do that with more _intensity_ ," whereas
going to a club is supposed to be _fun_ \-- indeed, such fun that lots of
basically ordinarily people pay fairly large amounts of money to go to it.

So these people are being paid not to, like, fake go to a club in front of
cameras and it's work, but literally be paid to have fun.

I expect that the actuality of it is a little more complex than that, but
there does seem like there's a grain of truth in it, too.

------
golergka
Celebrity culture of US is so bizzarelly different from the nightlife culture
I know. I understand that some people just want to waste money sitting at the
table with a celebrity, but why call this establishment a nightclub in the
first place?

Clubs are places to enjoy the music — without phones, without friends, without
stupid conversations. Things describes in that article are the exact opposite
of this.

------
chetman
The whole things seems incredibly distant and surreal to me, but I'm also the
sort of person who would pay money to AVOID going to anything that bills
itself as a "night club." I much prefer a cozy pub or a decent wine bar,
ideally with the music low enough that conversation is possible.

But, you know, I'm a giant nerd, so what do I know?

------
throw7
ahhh... it's "1 Oak", I was reading it as "10 AK". Silly me.

------
086421357909764
They're leaving out the bigger part in that Clubs are a very easy way to
launder money. When the hire these celebrities to show up it makes it even
easier to move larger amounts of cash.

------
NoGravitas
#LateStageCapitalism

------
peterbsmith
And Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Ev Williams,
Marc Benioff, Sheryl Sandberg, Marissa Mayer, Arianna Huffington, etc... get
Millions of dollars per day. Within any one of those weeks, there is an hour
or two where they're not doing much more labor than a Scott Disick or Nikki
Minaj in a club.

~~~
collyw
The difference is that the people in the article are being paid just to turn
up. The business people you mentioned are in charge of large organizations
that are making them money while they aren't around.

------
tallanvor
> SKAM Artist

Well, it's certainly a scam!

------
bechampion
SMSPF

------
eternalban
I click on this link and immediately my retina screams "please switch off!".
It's an entirely different planet and species. An now I need to take a shower.
/!s

