Here's How Much Money Friends Was Pulling In During Its Final Season
Ask anyone if they know any TV show; chances are that Friends would be the first thing they say.
Friends is still a cultural icon despite being over for 19 years by 2023. The show had such a simple premise, yet it has ingrained itself in pop culture like nothing else. The name itself tells you everything you need to know.
Considering the show's success and how long it ran, it's fun to think about how much money it made. After all, not all shows run for 200+ episodes over the course of 10 years. So Friends were doing something right, right?
Business Insider reported that the cast was making a decent amount from the first season in 1994. They were paid $22,500 per episode, which is not too shabby for a few relatively unknown (at that time) actors. By the third season, the cast was getting paid $75,000 per episode.
As their fame grew and the show got more popular, the titular Friends negotiated their way up to $1 million per episode. While some criticized the immensely high paycheck the actors were asking for, it makes sense if you consider how much money the show was making.
Thirty-second commercials which were played for the final season were making a million dollars, with the finale's spots going for $2 million. This was the largest advertising rate for any sitcom.
52.5 million viewers watched the finale in 2004, and the special earned around 35 million viewers. The finale was the fourth most-watched episode in TV history, which is mind-boggling.
According to Forbes, the sitcom reportedly earned almost $1.4 billion since its debut in 1994. In total, the cast earned almost $136 million each after taxes. The show's creators, David Crane and Marta Kaufman, as well as co-executive producer Kevin Bright, stated that their pre-cast earnings were around $550 million.
The Friends brand is still a huge moneymaker despite the show wrapping up in 2004. The reunion episode in 2021 was watched by 29% of the streaming households in the US. Another 5 million viewers watched from the UK, breaking the records for the Sky streaming service.
The cast received $20 million in total for the reunion. Each member earned between $3 million to $4 million. Even today, all of the cast receive 2% of the syndication revenue out of $1 billion of revenue generated by Warner Bros. To put that into perspective, that is a whopping $20 million per person each year.