Someone somewhere should maybe try to work out how many media appearances Brian Cox and Nicola Sturgeon gave to promote their new play and book respectively.
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Previous cancel culture controversies surrounding Jerry Sadowitz and Joanna Cherry multiplied this year to engulf the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Summerhall and the National Library of Scotland
Threats of protests at festival performances fizzled out, despite dozens of pro-Palestine protesters disrupted an appearance by John Swinney at The Stand Comedy Club, days after he vowed to protect freedom of speech to open the festivals.
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been running since 1947. (Image: PA/ Jane Barlow)
Summerhall’s apology for the presence of his deputy, Kate Forbes, in its programme, brought criticism from Mr Swinney, Ms Sturgeon and finance minister Shona Robison raining down on the venue’s management months after they secured a crucial Scottish Government funding.
Against a backdrop of online anger, the organisers of shows and events attracted an overall audience of more than 3.5 million, according to my latest calculations. By any standards, it was one of the busiest summer seasons the city has ever had.
It was of course helped by a month of glorious weather which undoubtedly encouraged the crowds to come out, and stay out, day after day.
To make it even more surreal, it was only interrupted once, by the biggest storm to hit the festivals that anyone involved in them can remember.
The first ever weather-related cancellation of a Tattoo performance was following by the temporary shutdown of several pop-up Fringe venues and the cancellation of 138 shows at the last count.
The bad weather struck just as venues – and many others in the city – were bracing themselves for the arrival of Oasis and their fans, unsure of what would unfold.
The arrival of the bucket hat brigade was, by all accounts, trouble fee and added to the carnival atmosphere in the city centre. Regular Edinburgh-based festivalgoers joined them at Murrayfield in their hundreds, while thousands sat in the outside outside the stadium to listen in to the Gallaghers.
There is no doubt that the scheduling clash of the three Oasis shows, the one-off AC/DC show at Murrayfield and even a 30,000-capacity Sam Fender gig at the Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston will have played a part in the cost of accommodation soaring to record levels for August.
It is also undeniable that many fans will have sought out accommodation outside of Edinburgh, as normally happens with Murrayfield plays host to Six Nations fixtures.
But it is not clear whether those concerts – and this week’s two Chappell Roan shows, which have sold 60,000 tickets – had any noticeable impact on the scale of the Fringe or its success this year.
The number of Fringe tickets sold by the start of the final days of shows was just over 2.6 million for the second year in a row.
The marginal difference of 8500 could well have been made up had the Fringe not been badly affected by Storm Floris, which would clearly have impacted last-minute ticket sales on the crucial first Monday, when tickets are traditionally sold on a two-for-one basis.
I was hearing reports of slow ticket sales, particularly for theatre shows, as early as the second weekend of the Fringe, when Oasis were in town, and it was a constant theme over the month.
Other trends, which mirror ticket sales in arts and culture, is that festivalgoers were spending their money on well-known performers and tried-and-tested shows.
If you live in Edinburgh and love theatre, it is almost certain you made every effort to catch Brian Cox in Make It Happen, the big National Theatre of Scotland production in the Edinburgh International Festival. But these tickets were not cheap and its success may well have impact on other theatre productions.
A difficult balancing act for Fringe venues, producers and companies is the scale the event has got to, the level of competition for audiences and the fact that people do not expect to pay a lot for tickets unless something special is on offer.
The Edinburgh International Festival has reported its highest percentage of tickets sold in a decade, but was still 14,000 down on its 2024 ticket sales, after it was forced to scale back its programme this year when a crucial decision on its Scottish Government funding was delayed by several months.
Even though there was a definite sense of slimmer pickings at Fringe venues like the Traverse and Summerhall this month, the fact remains that the number of theatre productions in the programme rose from 883 to 930, the second best represented art form after comedy.
The bigger picture is that the Fringe appears to more popular than ever before with artists and performers, with a record 3893 shows registering in the end. This compares to the 3746 shows in the last year’s line-up and the 3841 in the 2019 Fringe, the only year when festival has managed to top three million ticket sales.
One of the first things Fringe Society chief executive Tony Lankester told me when he started in the role earlier this year was that he wanted to grow the audience back to that number.
Trying to persuade concert promoters DF Concerts, Scottish Rugby and the Royal Highland Centre to avoid any August clashes in future might seem desirable from the point of view of Fringe venues, but seems highly unlikely to put them off given the undoubted success and popularity of this summer’s shows.
The Fringe Society and all those with a stake in the event should focus their attention on initiatives to ringfence affordable accommodation for artists and performers, help meet the costs of putting on shows, ensure there are more late-night public transport options available and make an effort to spread events out across the city.
Fringe venue operators have had a lot to say over the last year about the prospect of going head-to-head with stadium concerts, even to the point of suggesting there should be some form of curbs on such events. I would suggest this is a dangerous idea to float given there has never been a meaningful effort to manage or control the growth and expansion of the Fringe.
Perhaps it is time for the many folk who are involved with the Fringe year after year to take stock on the size of the festival, what form it should take in future years, the scale of what they themselves do, and how to make the event as appealing as possible for artists and audiences as the Fringe heads towards its 80th birthday in 2027.
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