Brit-onomics: How Britney Spears Stimulates Spending

Portƒolio magazine brings a new angle to the Britney Spears story, asking, in their report “The Britney Economy,” just how much money the singer and unfit-mothers’-rights activist produces annually. Beyond record sales, Wal-Mart scent exclusives, and cancelled concert tours, the mere act of Britney being Britney, indulging each and every one of her increasingly unpredictable whims, winds up putting cheesy-bread on the table of countless paparazzi, gossip magazine editors, hair-extension technicians, and coffee-blending artisans, to the tune of a whopping $US120 million per year:

A Britney photo garners anywhere from $250 (for a run-of-the-mill shot of her at Starbucks) to $US100,000 or more.

The photo agency X17, which has a team trailing her 24-7, estimates that Britney accounts for 30 percent of its revenue: It sold $US2.5 million worth of Britney photos in 2007 alone, including $500,000 for its exclusive Bald Britney pics. Competitor Splash News says that Britney accounts for 10 to 15 per cent of its business, boosted this year by $200,000 for photos of Britney in a hot tub. All told, Britney probably makes up a full 20 per cent of the paparazzi business.

Of course, none of this should be news to economists, or even the dabbler: Readers of Alan Greenspan’s best-seller The Age of Turbulence, for example, already know that the former Federal Reserve Chairman actually named his book for Spears’s infamous head-shaving, umbrella-attacking antics, noting in the key chapter “The Britney Effect” that the very act of the pantiless pop star emerging from a limousine to expose her bald nether regions can, like a butterfly flapping its wings halfway across the world, lead to devastating financial consequences for global free markets.

[Photo: X17]

• The Britney Economy [Portfolio]