Taylor Swift became a billionaire with a new boyfriend and the world went wild for a cinematic cocktail of atomic bombs and Barbie.
Bud Light lost its crown as America’s best-selling beer, the ‘king of crypto’ Sam Bankman-Fried was also dethroned, and Hunter Biden’s woes shifted from his embarrassing leaked nudes to a slew of criminal charges.
Yes, 2023 really was a year of big winners and epic losers.
Here, DailyMail.com chronicles ten of the year’s greatest victors – and ten of its colossal failures.
LOSERS
Bud Light
For 22 years, Bud Light reigned supreme as America’s best-selling beer.
Then, in early 2023, someone in marketing decided to send trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney a can with her face on it. Mulvaney was given the ceremonial beer to mark ‘365 days of womanhood’ and also signed an Instagram partnership with Bud Light.
The doomed deal was an attempt by since-departed marketing VP Alissa Heinerscheid to ‘attract young drinkers’ and abandon the beer’s ‘fratty and out-of-touch humor’.
It prompted a backlash led by Kid Rock, who emerged from a decade of obscurity and shot up a case of Bud Light with an AR-style rifle in protest.
As the conservative backlash grew into a widespread boycott, Anheuser-Busch stock plunged 20 percent, Bud Light sales fell 26 percent and Modelo Especial became the new best-selling beer in the country.
The brewer’s hangover continues. Heads continued to roll at Anheuser-Busch with the resignation of its US marketing chief in November. Sales of Bud Light haven’t fully recovered.
Sam Bankman-Fried
Celebrities, investors and the media may have been duped by Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto boy genius act: the floppy hair, unkempt clothes and seemingly endless supplies of cash.
But a jury of nine men and three women at his fraud trial were not.
Sam Bankman-Fried, a teetotal and vegan gamer who slept on a beanbag in his office, was convicted in November of one of the biggest frauds in US history and face 100 years in prison
Despite Bankman-Fried’s protestations that he had no idea his crypto exchange, FTX, had misappropriated about $10 billion of customer funds for risky investments, he was found guilty of one of America’s largest frauds on November 2. He faces 100 years in prison.
Before his $32 billion empire came crashing down in November 2022, Bankman-Fried – a teetotal vegan gamer who regularly slept on a beanbag in his office – recruited celebs including Tom Brady as Larry David to promote FTX and also appeared alongside former leaders like Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to promote the project.
None of the stars leapt to Bankman-Fried’s defense after he was charged. Instead, his top lieutenants, including his ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison, lined up to lay the blame squarely at his feet.
Bankman-Fried, 31, spent the beginning of the year awaiting trial at his parents’ home in California (where both are professors at Stanford), after posting $250 million bail. His bail was revoked in August after prosecutors accused him of witness tampering over his decision to share private writings by Ellison with the New York Times.
He’ll be sentenced in March 2024.
George Santos
George Santos, expelled from Congress in December, claimed he was the Jewish son of immigrants and a high-flying banker whose mother survived 9/11. He isn’t
Former Congressman George Santos claimed to be the Jewish son of immigrants who arrived in America after his grandparents fled the Holocaust.
According to his resume, he went on to become a high-flying banker at Goldman Sachs, owned an expansive property portfolio and was a college volleyball star. He claimed his mother was working at her office in the World Trade Center’s South Tower when a plane hit it on 9/11.
None of it was true.
Santos, who was sworn in as the U.S. Representative for New York’s Third Congressional District on January 7, is in fact a Catholic former drag queen. He didn’t go to college or work at major Wall Street firms, and his mother was not at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
The 35-year-old’s demise was triggered in December last year when the New York Times exposed a litany of lies on his resume.
He is awaiting trial on 13 criminal charges, including fraud, theft of public funds, money laundering and making false statements to Congress. We await his robust defense with bated breath.
On December 1, he was finally expelled from Congress.
He is awaiting trial on 13 criminal charges, including fraud, theft of public funds, money laundering and making false statements to Congress.
Hunter Biden
Hunter Biden was charged in December with nine counts related to $1.4 million in owed taxes, with a potential 17-year sentence. He was also charged in June with a felony firearms offense
To say the president’s son has had a rough few years would be an understatement, but things went from bad to worse in 2023.
Having already been plagued by the laptop controversy – which included leaked photos of his drug abuse and liaisons with sex workers – and corruption claims, Hunter Biden was hit by a slew of criminal charges this year which could put him in jail for 17 years if convicted.
Hunter was charged in Delaware in June with two tax offenses and a felony firearm offense that alleged he unlawfully owned a weapon while addicted to drugs.
On December 8, he was indicted on three felonies and six misdemeanors in California relating to $1.4 million in taxes owed between 2016 and 2019.
Days later, Hunter delivered a fiery address on Capitol Hill, where he defied a subpoena to give evidence to an impeachment probe into his father and instead railed against ‘shameless’ Republicans who accuse Joe of profiting from his position as vice-president under Barack Obama.
Alex Murdaugh
For six weeks in spring, the nation was gripped by the televised trial of fallen legal scion Alex Murdaugh.
The patriarch of South Carolina’s most prominent legal dynasty was jailed for life without parole in March for the murder of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son, Paul, 22, at their sprawling hunting estate in Moselle.
Alex Murdaugh in his prison mugshot taken on March 7 after he was handed two life sentences without parole for the murders of his wife, Maggie, 52, and son, Paul, 22, at their hunting estate
The trial followed a number of documentaries about the killings and came amid several other scandals involving the family, including the death of a young woman who was killed while passenger in a boat driven by Paul.
Murdaugh’s pathetic attempts to deny the grisly shotgun murders included repeatedly insisting he would never harm ‘Mags’ and ‘Paw Paw’. Prosecutors said he deployed the nicknames, which he’d never used during police interviews about the slayings, to try and dupe jurors into believing he was a loving father and husband.
In November, Murdaugh, now 55, was handed a separate 27-year sentence after confessing he stole millions from vulnerable clients at his law firm.
Airlines
Airlines had one of their worst years ever after record delays, an engine parts scandal and rising near misses between aircraft
If you took a flight in 2023, there’s a chance it was delayed, the airplane’s engine was fitted with dubious parts, or a fellow passenger suffered a meltdown. You may also have experienced a perilous near-miss with another aircraft.
The year amounted to one of the worst ever for the American airline industry.
Carriers in the US racked up one million delayed departures in record time. A UK-based company was accused of supplying engine parts with bogus safety paperwork around the world, affecting all of America’s major carriers.
Near misses also increased significantly thanks to chronic staff shortages (caused by the failure to replace thousands of workers laid off during the pandemic).
Perhaps all of that is what led ‘crazy plane lady’ Tiffany Gomas to scream at her fellow passengers: ‘I’m getting the f*** off and there’s a reason why I’m getting the f*** off.’
Banks
First Republic Bank’s collapse in May was the second largest bank failure in US history
For a few weeks in March, the world held its breath in fear of another global financial crisis.
Several mid-size American banks with assets totaling nearly $600 billion collapsed in the space of five days, largely because they found themselves overstretched when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates.
Silvergate Bank was first on March 8, then two days later Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Signature Bank went under on March 12.
The crisis extended to First Republic, which became the second largest bank failure in US history and was later sold to JPMorgan on May 1 for $1.6 billion.
Small and mid-size banks which survived the mini-crisis continue to be squeezed.
Fox News
Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News in April, less than a week after the network agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $787.5 million to settle a defamation case
In the space of a week Fox News lost its star anchor and $787.5 million.
The sensational sum of money was promised to Dominion Voting Systems on April 18 to settle claims the network defamed the company by broadcasting false claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
Six days later on April 24, Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox News.
Carlson’s show regularly drew more than three million viewers and was the most popular program on cable news.
Before the Dominion settlement, reams of private messages sent by Carlson were made public during the case, revealing his private skepticism of claims the election was stolen and ‘hate’ for Donald Trump.
Carlson went on to launch a show on X and has created the Tucker Carlson Network streaming platform.
San Francisco
Homeless people gather on the streets of San Francisco in December 2023 after a bleak year for the city, which has faced a business exodus and the decline of its once-thriving downtown
As cities across America have largely returned to life after the punishing Covid lockdowns of 2020/21, San Francisco has bucked the trend with dire consequences.
The erstwhile jewel of the West Coast has been battered by a business exodus, rampant homelessness and crime. Office vacancies are running at a record high, the city’s largest hotels have closed and top retailers have shut their doors for good.
Mayor London Breed has since been forced to tear up a record-breaking budget and impose city-wide cuts because of plunging tax revenues which economists termed a ‘doom loop’.
The city got a boost in November when it hosted China’s president, Xi Jinping, for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. It was cleaned up for the visit but homeless camps have sprung back up since.
Harvard, MIT and UPenn
Harvard President Claudine Gay (left) said it ‘depends on the context’ when she was asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated the university’s code of conduct
Calling for the mass murder of Jews might violate Harvard University’s code of conduct. Or it might not. It ‘depends on the context’, according to Harvard President Dr Claudine Gay.
She delivered the astonishing remark at a congressional hearing on antisemitism in December, held after a spike in troubling incidents at pro-Palestine protests following the Hamas attacks on Israel in October and Israel’s military response.
Sally Kornbluth, the president of MIT, and UPenn’s since-departed president Elizabeth Magill also gave mealy-mouthed responses about ‘context’ when asked by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik whether ‘calling for the genocide of Jews’ violates the policies of these esteemed institutions.
The scandal triggered a crisis for America’s top colleges and calls for all three presidents to be expelled (so far, only Magill has resigned).
Gay’s woes deepened when she was hit by a wave of plagiarism allegations over claims she lifted ‘entire paragraphs’ from other authors into her academic writings. Harvard has stood by her.
Winners
Taylor Swift (and Travis Kelce)
Taylor Swift might be the standout success of 2023 – or it might be Travis Kelce, who was catapulted from unknown-outside-of-football to the world’s most famous boyfriend
Is Taylor Swift the standout success of 2023, or is Travis Kelce? The football star’s renown reached new heights as he became the world’s most famous boyfriend.
Swift, 34, boosted her megastar credentials with two number one albums, a record-breaking tour and a blockbuster movie – becoming a billionaire in the process.
The Eras Tour has grossed $1 billion since it began in March and boosted the US economy by an estimated $5 billion. Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), a re-recording of her second album, was released in July and topped the Billboard 200, making her the woman with the most Billboard number ones.
1989 (Taylor’s Version) also went straight to number one on its October release and Swift became the most-streamed artist of 2023 on Spotify and Apple Music.
She was Time Magazine’s person of the year in December.
The year started with the rumor she was dating The 1975’s Matty Healy. That fizzled out soon – disappointed Swifties complained about Healy’s history of controversial comments and penchant for ‘brutal’ porn.
Her relationship with Kelce, the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs tight end, started around the end of July. They have attended each other’s matches and shows amid a frenzy of publicity since.
Barbenheimer
A fan-made poster celebrates Barbenheimer, the joint release of Barbie and Oppenheimer on July 21 which made a combined $2.5 billion at the global box office
What do you get when you cross Barbie with the father of the atomic bomb? Global box office revenues of nearly $2.5 billion.
The joint release of Barbie and Oppenheimer on July 21 triggered hysteria not seen in Hollywood since before Covid, which also left cinemas in dire need of blockbuster movies to remind the streaming service-obsessed public they still exist.
Barbie, which triggered its own mini culture war among critics who couldn’t agree whether it was fiercely feminist or inexcusably sexist, grossed $1.44 billion worldwide. Oppenheimer, a loud and immersive screenplay about atomic bomb mastermind Robert J Oppenheimer, took $947 million.
Inter Miami/Lionel Messi
Lionel Messi’s $150 million transfer to Inter Miami didn’t just help the club win its first ever trophy, it also boosted the city’s tourism industry by $400 million
Pundits called it the ‘Messi Effect’.
The Argentine, 36, didn’t just inspire Inter Miami to its first ever trophy and give fresh credibility to the MLS, his transfer from Paris Saint-Germain in July also raised house prices in Florida and boosted Miami’s tourism industry by $400 million.
Messi was brought in by MLS co-owner David Beckham hot on the heels of Argentina’s World Cup win in December 2022.
His two-and-a-half year deal is worth a reported $150 million and includes a salary, plus an ownership stake in the club and revenues from Apple, which streams MLS matches, and Adidas.
Weight loss drugs
Drugs for weight loss like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro have exploded in popularity
The bleak days of relying on exercise and healthy eating to lose weight are over. Now, all it takes is a weekly injection to achieve a supermodel physique, right?
That’s what some speculation about the promise of weight loss drugs including Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro would have you believe.
The hype provoked a scramble – sales of the drugs surged by more than 300 percent this year according to estimates, triggering a nationwide shortage.
Ozempic and Mounjaro are diabetes treatments prescribed off-label for weight loss, so the shortages have had serious implications for diabetics who need them.
Critics say the drugs can cause nasty side effects for some patients and should not be a substitute for healthier lifestyle choices. They also warn of the risks of fakes.
Celebrities who’ve said they use weight loss drugs include Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk and Sharon Osbourne.
The drugs are still prohibitively expensive for most people – the Danish company that makes Ozempic and Wegovy, Novo Nordisk, is now Europe’s most valuable listed company.
Artificial intelligence
AI was one of 2023’s hottest trends after the continuing success of ChatGPT and a rush by big tech to embrace the technology
The following summary of AI’s success in 2023 was written by ChatGPT:
In 2023, the AI industry experienced dramatic turns, highlighted by Sam Altman’s shocking dismissal and swift return as CEO of OpenAI, a move that revealed deep tensions within the AI community and Microsoft’s increasing influence.
Generative AI saw remarkable adoption, with a third of organizations integrating it into their operations, especially impactful in the technology sector. NVIDIA, a key innovator in AI, saw its market cap soar past the $1 trillion mark, reflecting its dominant position in the rapidly evolving AI market.
Gwyneth Paltrow
If Gwyneth Paltrow didn’t see Terry Sanderson coming, the world didn’t see their farcical courtroom showdown coming, either.
The actress won a sensational trial against Sanderson in March after he claimed she collided with him on the slopes of an upmarket ski resort in Utah in 2016.
Sanderson, 76, a twice-divorced retired optometrist from Utah, claimed the crash left him brain damaged and unable to enjoy leisurely pursuits including wine tastings. He filed for damages in 2019 and initially sought $3.1 million (a judge later ruled he couldn’t expect more than $300,000).
After a two-week trial – whose highlights included a weird animated recreation of the crash and frequent fawning over Paltrow by Sanderson’s attorney – a judge ruled he was ‘100 percent’ to blame. Sanderson had skied straight into the back of an oblivious Paltrow.
Gwynnie, who had countersued blaming Sanderson for the crash, was awarded a symbolic $1 in damages but Sanderson was also left with legal fees estimated to be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The trial – which was streamed live across the world – spawned dozens of memes about Gwynnie’s outfits, facial expressions and her claim that the crash cost her ‘half a day of skiing’.
Hollywood strikers
After strikes which ran through summer and brought major productions to a halt, the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists secured major concessions from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers
Hollywood ground to a halt in May when tens of thousands of actors, writers and other production staff began months of historic strikes for better pay and job security.
The action, which ran into November, stalled dozens of big-name productions, including Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse and Stranger Things season five. Strikers also won support of stars including Larry David and Pete Davidson.
It was the first time in 60 years that the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) went on strike simultaneously.
The unions reached agreements with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers to increase pay, benefits and job protections.
Those who were impatiently waiting for the return of The White Lotus, Yellowstone or Deadpool 3 were able to breathe a sigh of relief at the end of the lengthy standoff.
Thankfully, there’s still a huge backlog of TV and film to look forward to in 2024.
The Magnificent Seven
Nvidia, which manufactures computer chips, has enjoyed returns of nearly 250 percent this year and is the top performer in the S&P 500
The stock markets rallied big in 2023 thanks to sensational growth of the so-called Magnificent Seven tech stocks: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, NVIDIA, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla.
Nvidia was the headline performer after around 250 percent growth, making it the world’s first trillion-dollar chipmaker. The company’s growth was spurred by the AI boom, which also helped carry the other Magnificent Seven stocks higher.
The gains, which helped lift the wider S&P 500 index by around 25 percent, was good news for investors and 401(k) savers and followed a bumpy end to 2022.
Chinese spy balloon
A Chinese spy balloon successfully traversed the entirety of the mainland United States before it was down by a $400,000 missile fired from a $125 million fighter jet
Cast your mind all the way back to January. America was gripped by paranoia about massive, inflatable threats to national security.
A spy balloon launched by China was discovered floating across the United States, potentially hoovering up intelligence about military sites and nuclear bases.
The balloon was eventually brought down on February 4 by a $400,000 AIM-9 Sidewinder missile fired from a $125 million F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
But not before the sinister inflatable had successfully traversed the entirety of the mainland United States at an approximate altitude of 50,000ft to 70,000ft.
The episode triggered a diplomatic crisis. Joe Biden postponed a trip to China over the ‘unacceptable’ incursion. Other Chinese spy balloons were reportedly spotted over Canada, South America and Asia.
Intelligence officials now say the spy balloon even used an American internet service provider to communicate.
Amid the panic, trigger happy military officials even shot down a harmless radio balloon launched by a hobbyist group in Illinois – expending another $400,000 missile in the process.
The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was established in 27 BC. By around 117 AD, it reached its peak and governed land across three continents.
In September 2023, it conquered TikTok.
Social media was gripped by the revelation that droves of men seemingly think about the Roman Empire ‘every day’.
The trend started after a Roman re-enactor who goes by Gaius Flavius posted on Instagram: ‘Ladies, many of you do not realise how often men think about the Roman Empire. Ask your husband/boyfriend/father/brother – you will be surprised by their answers.’
His theory was proven true and for weeks TikTok was flooded with videos of men solemnly confessing they think about the mighty ancient empire as much as four times a day. The #romanempire hashtag racked up three billion views.
‘There’s so much to think about,’ said one captivated male.