The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) brings in a lot of money to the city, and it would very much like you to know that.
As if hosting countless movie stars and brilliant directors every year weren’t enough bragging rights, the festival is quite fond of talking up its economic impact. A boilerplate attached to every press release it puts out cites its “estimated economic impact of $240 million CAD,” a nice big number if there ever was one. There’s a good reason for it: Like any savvy marketer, TIFF knows its audience – and it’s not the folks in the seats.
Like nearly all film festivals in Canada, Toronto’s annual celebrity fest gets a solid chunk of change from the public purse: According to Charity Intelligence Canada, it received $4.4 million in government funding in 2023, and $14.8 million the year before. This year, the federal government is investing another $23 million into the festival to launch TIFF: The Market, where Hollywood movers and shakers can hash out deals for the same indie flicks showing at Midnight Madness.
With TIFF becoming a big business in its own right, it may seem strange that the government still treats it as a fledgling arts festival that needs a leg up. But year over year, TIFF has made a convincing case that every dollar invested in its programming yields several more in terms of economic impact, jobs, and tax revenue. It’s a narrative tailor-made to keep the government invested, and a perfectly fair one, too. Following its lead, other film festivals across the country are starting to quantify their economic bonafides as well, making the case to the taxpayer as lucrative investments in culture and the film industry alike.
The modern commercialization of film festivals – the glamour, the distribution deals, the ever-increasing ticket prices – would come as a shock to their progenitors. For most of the 20th century, film festivals were decidedly highbrow, and existed as places for unprofitable-yet-good arthouse films to get their flowers. These days, however, that divide between art and commerce has fully broken down. While independent films are still at the heart of TIFF, the festival has, like Cannes and Berlin, become attached to parallel film markets running alongside them, bringing the industry movers and shakers to town along with the auteurs.
In 2025, spending at local Toronto businesses rose 10% for the duration of TIFF, and international tourism to the city jumped by 15%.
That many visitors converging on any city for one week is sure to fill hotels and restaurants, and film festivals soon became economic drivers for their host cities. Cannes itself was a resort town before it was a film mecca, and the potential for symbiosis was obvious. Following in Cannes’ stiletto footsteps, TIFF has been sure to make the case for its own economic relevance. Doing so has allowed TIFF to, in the words of a 2025 article by Master’s student Shulie Smolyanitsky, “lobby for continued and sustained support for the festival and its mission.”
That lobbying comes backed up with some serious data. Thanks to a nearly 30-year partnership between the festival and Visa, there’s plenty of stats available on how much cash TIFF brings into its host city: In 2025, spending at local Toronto businesses rose 10% for the duration of the event, and international tourism to the city jumped by 15%.
And there really are a lot of tourists. Fed Dev Ontario estimates that more than 700,000 people visit Toronto for the festival, enough to boost the city’s population by nearly 25% for just a couple of weeks. All those fans, producers, and actors need places to stay, and they snap up hotel rooms across town. As a result, September, a time that would otherwise be a quieter time in the shoulder season, tops the year in revenue for Toronto hotels. Those tourists aren’t just in town for movies, either – data shows they go on to spend more cash at clothing stores, restaurants, and retail stores, sprinkling even more money around the city.
Then there are the Hollywood types themselves. Don’t underestimate the impact of having all the world’s best directors and producers spend some time in your city: If they like the place, they may well come back, cameras in hand. This has long been the case for Toronto, which constantly serves as a stand-in for more exciting places the world-over. One 2019 survey of industry types attending TIFF found attendees “universally felt” the festival had been important for Toronto and Ontario’s development as a film production location. A number of “major international producers” even said they filmed in Toronto after having been introduced to it by TIFF.
If any dollar given to the festival generates solid returns and comes with the general prestige of having Arnold Schwarzenegger bike around Toronto, then it’s well worth it.
It’s all this stuff that adds up to the $240 million in economic activity the festival likes to bring up. With the government investing $23 million into the festival this year, that means TIFF gives back 10 times what the government puts in – not a bad ratio at all, and an attractive figure come grant season. If any dollar given to the festival generates solid returns and comes with the general prestige of having Arnold Schwarzenegger bike around Toronto, then it’s well worth it.
It’s not surprising, then, that smaller film festivals in the country are starting to make more hay about their economic bonafides. BC’s Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) runs from October 1 to 11 and showcases an arguably broader range of award-winning films than its more popular Ontario sibling. Until recently, VIFF hasn’t tooted its horn nearly as loudly, but this is changing: last year, the festival released its second-ever economic impact report, and its first since 2015.
By the festival’s own telling, those numbers are quite good. Last year, for a budget of $6 million, VIFF contributed nearly $16 million to the GDP of its home province. Over half of that was from tourism – a surprising statistic, since tourists (defined as anyone outside of Metro Vancouver) accounted for just 19% of the festival’s attendees. Granted, those numbers are estimates, and they assume that visitors aren’t just sleeping on couches and eating ramen – each tourist is assumed to spend $1,113 in their visit, with about a third going towards paid accommodation. But with the majority of attendees listing the festival as their main reason to come to town, it’s reasonable to believe most made a proper vacation out of it – and spent accordingly.
Visitors aren’t just sleeping on couches and eating ramen – each tourist is assumed to spend $1,113 in their visit
Even at its smaller scale, VIFF still provides a similar ROI for taxpayers as its cousin in Toronto. Financial data from the festival shows it received 32% of its revenue from government grants in 2025, to the tune of just under $1.9 million. With a GDP impact of $16 million, that’s a ratio of 8.2 – also very good.
So it’s strange that some festivals don’t tout their bonafides more often. Montreal’s long-running Fantasia film festival is even more well-respected than VIFF, and yet it has no economic impact statements available. Originally founded in 1996 as a showcase of Asian film, Fantasia has since played a key role in the introduction of Japanese horror to western audiences, and today it's the premier festival for genre films in North America, screening the horror, action, and fantasy films often deemed too ‘commercial’ for the likes of Cannes or Berlin. It’s been praised as “a shrine” by Guillermo del Toro, and as “the most important and prestigious genre film festival on this continent” by Quentin Tarantino.
One could argue that those endorsements speak for themselves, but there’s no sense in being modest. Film festivals may have begun as non-commercial refuges for the pure art of cinema, but no one watching the glamour of a Cannes red carpet would consider them capital-free affairs. Any savvy advertiser has to know their audience, and when it comes to the government, hauling out the big graphs gets results.
So film fests, don’t be modest in your acceptance speeches. In this industry, it pays to brag.
