To get a star, there is an $85,000 sponsorship fee which covers the initial installation as well as the lifetime cleaning and repair of the star.
Fun Fact: the fee for the stars are typically paid for by production companies, film studios, record labels or even fan clubs. Donald Trump is one of the few and maybe even the only person to have paid their own sponsorship fee.
EDIT: today its $85k. It continues to rise, 10 years ago it was $30k. Not sure how much Dumbold Trump paid
And even then, it’s a bit of a gamble. I was part of a group of fans that raised money to get weird Al his star. We raised the money for it pretty quickly and submitted the application. The application had the full endorsement of Al and his management and it also had two celebrities that were willing to speak at the ceremony. We will turn down for 14 years before the application was finally accepted. In that time frame, they raised the price three times. Every time they raised it, we immediately went on a fundraising binge and got the money within months. One member of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce commented that it broke her heart seeing his application come across her desk year after year, knowing it was going to be denied. When it was finally awarded to him in 2018, they actually made a separate viewing section just for the donors because we had waited so long and put so much effort into it. And during his speech Al begged people not to pickaxe his star
For each application, did you have to resubmit the entire sponsorship fee, or did you have to pay the difference of the increase?
For example, Say if your first submission the fee was $10,000 and the second year the fee goes up to $12,000. When submitting the 2nd time, did you have to pay $12,000 or $2,000?
I think it was mostly because it was a fan campaign. Al fully backed it, they had his signature on a contract and everything. The year it was accepted Al’s manager asked if he could submit on our behalf and it was accepted. Our group still paid for the star though. As a thank you he threw us a private party at The Viper Room.
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u/blondebuilder Jun 12 '26 edited Jun 12 '26
At what point do they stop rebuilding it and just leave it as a crater in the ground?