The costs and earnings of the Sanremo Festival 2025: between expense items and revenue forecasts, here are all the numbers of the Rai singing event.
How much did the 2025 Sanremo Festival cost? The question is repeated every year, when with methodical attention Italians do the math for public television that they themselves finance (in part) through bills.
After all, in recent years the Sanremo Festival has been a sort of golden goose for Rai, with the company managing to reduce costs and increase revenues, an operation that represents a sort of unicum in the Viale Mazzini area.
The Sanremo Festival is in fact a machine capable of generating money for Rai and visibility for singers, but this sort of perfect machine requires considerable expenses in order to function at its best.
For the Sanremo Festival 2025, a overall turnover of more than 240 million euros is thus expected: with numbers like that, it is easy to understand that it is not just a simple singing competition (here is our focus on the rules).
Let’s see in detail what the costs of the Sanremo Festival 2025 are, taking a look at the expenses for the fees and how much Rai hopes to collect from the event that will take place from 11 to 15 February.
The costs of the Sanremo Festival 2025
When talking about the costs of the Sanremo Festival, we must start from a premise: it is not possible to talk about certain figures since Rai does not disclose this information.
Having made this necessary clarification, as regards the Sanremo Festival 2025 we can rely on an accurate investigation conducted by Ernst & Young which estimated the costs, earnings and economic impact of the singing competition.
According to EY, to organize the Sanremo Festival 2025, Rai should face organizational expenses of 20 million euros, an increase compared to the 18 million of last year.
Let’s now analyze what the various items of expenditure are for Rai regarding the organization of this 75th edition of the Festival.
Festival expenses: management and fees
One of the most important items of the costs of the Sanremo Festival is the one related to the fees of the host, the co-hosts, the guests and the singers in the competition, not to mention the technicians and various workers involved in ensuring the broadcast of the singing event.
Here are the estimates of expenditure regarding the fees, with Rai not having released the official figures.
- Host: in recent years Amadeus is said to have earned a total of 450,000 euros, with Carlo Conti - also artistic director like his predecessor - who could earn a similar sum.
- Co-hosts: this year there will be more than last year, a good twelve, with each one expected to receive a fee of 25,000 euros.
- Singers: there will be 29 singers competing after Emis Killa’s withdrawal, each of them will receive 53,000 euros in reimbursements, including 5,000 euros for the duets evening.
- Guests: in this case it is impossible to hypothesize the agreed fees since they vary depending on the guest.
The management of the entire show also has a rather high cost. In fact, the rent of the Ariston Theater, from December to the days after the singing festival, costs 1.6 million euros. The cost also includes the salaries of approximately 160 people who work there.
In 2022, it was estimated that approximately 300 people belonging to 30 different professional figures were employed for the direct production of the Festival, who begin preparations several months in advance.
These workers must be paid by Rai and require food and lodging for several weeks. According to the aforementioned analysis by Ernst & Young, 1,459 jobs will be generated for the Sanremo Festival 2025, including both the personnel directly involved in the organization and the related industries.
Sanremo Festival 2025: Rai’s earnings
Having listed the expenses, let’s now see how much the Rai’s earnings would amount to. We certainly know that in the last editions the takings have exceeded the costs, with Viale Mazzini hoping to end up in the black also in this edition.
“The advertising and sponsorship expenses made publicly available - we read in the EY analysis - will have an overall economic impact of 172 million, with an added value of 67 million and the creation of 910 jobs. Compared to the previous edition of the Festival, this year there is an overall increase of approximately 40 million in terms of production value (204.6 in 2024 and 245.1 in 2025). In terms of added value, in 2025 it stands at 99 million while in 2024 it stands at 77, marking an overall growth for this year of 21 million”.
Advertising and sponsorship expenses instead reached 67 million euros, compared to 56 million euros in 2024, with an increase of 11 million in the 2025 edition.
Another important revenue item for Rai is that relating to the sale of tickets to attend the five evenings of the Sanremo Festival live.
The Ariston theater has a capacity of 1960 seats, with tickets for the Sanremo Festival 2025 having been unobtainable for some time.
Here are the ticket prices for Sanremo 2025.
- Stalls ticket (first four evenings): 200 euros
- Gallery ticket (first four evenings): 110 euros
- Stalls ticket (final evening): 730 euros
- Gallery ticket (final evening): 360 euros
Given the prices and the sold out of the theater, with the 2025 edition of the Sanremo Festival, Rai will most likely collect over 2 million euros from ticket and season ticket sales.
But the territory will also be smiling, since the city of Sanremo according to estimates made by Jfc could record profits of 20 million euros, with the arrival of over 40,000 people expected.
Festival revenues and expenses: differences with the past
As mentioned, compared to previous years, Rai in this 2025 has decided to increase the expenditure for the Sanremo Festival, going from 18 to 20 million euros.
A decision most likely the result of the excellent revenues generated by the event, thus returning to the levels of a few years ago before Amadeus succeeded in the feat of increasing revenues by reducing costs.
In 2023, the advertising collection reached 50 million euros, while in 2024 it is estimated that it will have touched 60 million euros. For the Sanremo Festival 2025, forecasts indicate a further increase, with advertising revenues estimated at around 67 million euros.
Considering all the various items, the net margin for Rai deriving from the Sanremo Festival would have been around 30 million euros in 2023 and could have exceeded 40 million euros in 2024.
If also in this 2025 the ratings were to be excellent as in the last editions, then public television could surpass the 2024 record as regards the final balance.
Original article published on Money.it Italy 2025-02-06 11:22:04. Original title: Quanto costa il Festival di Sanremo 2025 tra guadagni, spese e compensi
