How Much Does The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Cost?

The 91st annual parade of floats snaking down Manhattan from 77th Street and Central Park West to 7th Avenue and 34th Street has, for many, officially kicked off the holiday season Thursday morning. It also comes with a price tag.

The official costs remain a mystery, as Macy’s Inc. keeps the numbers under wraps, but estimates abound. Just filling those balloons with hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of helium — of which Macy’s is the world’s second largest consumer, after the U.S. government — costs more than half a million dollars, according to CBS. The total annual cost, including float decorations and supplies, staff salaries, costumes and property taxes, the broadcast network found, reaches a staggering $11.6 million to $13.4 million, on average, while each new balloon costs its sponsoring company close to $200,000.

Macy’s, however, reuses plenty of costumes and supplies, rather than starting from scratch each year. Regardless, those expenses represent just a roughly 2 percent dent in Macy’s profits for 2016, down to $611 million from $1.07 billion the previous year, according to the company’s annual Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Though Macy’s net income may have dropped precipitously year-over-year — in 2014, it stood at around $1.5 billion — times aren’t as tough for the department store’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as they were in the years during World War II. The 1942, 1943 and 1944 parades were halted that year, due to a rubber shortage and the need for helium to inflate U.S. Navy blimps, according to TIME’s brief history of the annual event.

On the other hand, one thing likely driving costs upward this year is heightened security. In the wake of a terrorist attack just south of the route that killed eight people and injured 11 on Halloween this year, security measures at the event included officers wielding assault weapons and carrying radiation detectors, sanitation trucks serving as street-crossing barriers and even sharpshooters eyeing crowds for threats from nearby rooftops, according to USA Today.

In addition to the recent shooting, violence in Las Vegas and a southern Texas town, as well as the Islamic State militant group’s reported designation of the parade as an “excellent target” in the fall of 2016, may give parade-goers pause, but the New York City Police Department was sure to dispel any notion that proper safety was too costly for the city to handle.