Meghan Markle, Prince Harry Wedding ‘Net-Loss’ For British Taxpayers, Didn’t Bring In $1 Billion Revenue

Meghan Markle may believe her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry brought in $1.2 Billion (£1 Billion) in tourism revenue to Great Britain, but an anti-monarchy group claims that in fact, the royal nuptials wound up costing more money than disclosed.

According to Republic, an organization that believed the monarchy should be abolished, the wedding wound up being something that was actually a “net-loss” for British taxpayers, and while the Duchess of Sussex, who claimed her wedding brought an economic boost during her ongoing lawsuit against several tabloids, may think differently, her big day was allegedly much more costly.

“Meghan Markle is falling for the same spin that the royal household put out,” Republic CEO Graham Smith reportedly told Express UK. “There is no evidence at all that the monarchy ever bring money in from tourism. The idea that her wedding brought in £1 billion is pure fiction. There just isn’t any evidence to support that whatsoever.”

“It was a net loss for the British taxpayers and to try and justify spending public money on her wedding by making these rather weird claims is just another sign of their entitlement,” he added.

Smith did not reveal any financial figures about the overall cost to taxpayers while making his claim, but in documents filed as part of Markle’s ongoing lawsuit against Associated Newspapers earlier this week, she claimed that the amount of revenue the wedding generated “far outweighed” the total cost of crowd security, which was estimated to be £30 million and was mostly paid for by taxpayers.

“Any public costs incurred for the wedding were solely for security and crowd control to protect members of the public, as deemed necessary by Thames Valley Police and the Metropolitan Police,” her legal team said.

It has previously been estimated that the wedding did come in with a hefty price tag of over $40 million, making it the most expensive of the most recent royal weddings, though $30 million of that was expected to have been the cost of security.

However, Markle’s estimate, while high, isn’t far off from what was projected that the wedding could drum up for the British economy. In January 2018, a few months before the wedding, it was projected that the pair’s nuptials would drum up £500 million (or $680 million) in tourism for the economy, with 200 million pounds expected to be spent on travel and hotels, 150 million pounds on celebrations, 50 million on commemorative items and an additional 100 million in free advertising.