Big Brother 22: All-Stars is still giving out the same $500,000 grand prize that has been awarded since the first season of the show, but this amount of money is much less valuable today than it was back in 2000. The grand prize amount has not changed at all between BB1 and BB22. When CBS announced that the show would have its second-ever All-Stars season in 2020, many fans believed that the prize would finally be raised. After all, this year's Survivor: Winners at War did double the show's grand prize from $1 million to $2 million.
There are a lot of overlapping fans between Big Brother and Survivor, which prompted them to set similar expectations for this year's All-Stars season. However, it didn't take long for the producers to make it clear that the show's traditional $500,000 grand prize wouldn't be raised to $1 million. The only monetary difference for this season is that the contestants were paid a reported $40,000 stipend just to show up on BB22, which is a much higher amount than first-time houseguests are typically paid to compete in a regular season. Unfortunately, the grand prize amount is worth much less nowadays than it was on BB1, which aired in 2000.
According to the Inflation Calculator made available by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the $500,000 grand prize was worth significantly more when it was first given out on Big Brother 1 than it is worth nowadays on Big Brother 22: All-Stars. The $500,000 prize that Eddie McGee took home after winning BB1 in 2000 would be worth $753,125 today. Alternatively, the value of $500,000 that will be given out in 2020 would've been worth just $331,950 back in 2000. Whichever way the math goes, there is a clear difference of over $200,000 in value when one takes inflation into consideration. This is a clear mathematical reason why the show should have raised the grand prize amount at some point during these 20 years on the air.
At the moment, Cody Calafiore, Enzo Palumbo, and Nicole Franzel are competing for the $500,000 grand prize on BB22. This is still a significant amount of money in 2020, but it is important to note that this grand prize is much less valuable than it was on BB1 all the way back in 2000. The show should've taken inflation into account at some point in time in the last two decades, but the unchanged grand prize amount can definitely buy much less nowadays than it could buy 20 years ago. Particularly when analyzing the precedent set by Survivor, it is odd that the production team didn't decide to raise the grand prize for BB22.
The Big Brother 22 finale is almost here, and one houseguest will take home $500,000. Even if this amount is worth less than it was in 2000, it is still a pretty large sum of money that can change someone's life.
Big Brother 22: All-Stars airs Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 8pm EST on CBS.
Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics