Industry News

Edinburgh Fringe breaks ticket sales record for 2017 event

Edinburgh Festival Fringe sold a record 2.7 million tickets during this year’s event, organisers said as the event drew to a close.

The Fringe is the world’s largest arts festival and this year saw 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows in 300 venues across the city.

The 2017 event, which ended on Monday and spanned 24 days, jumped nine per cent year-on-year in terms of ticket sales.

A spokesman for the Fringe said: “We can confirm that more people than ever attended shows at the Fringe with an estimated 2,696,884 tickets issued for shows across Scotland’s capital.”

Of the many varying performance venues, some of the most unique included a swimming pool, a boat, a bathroom, a football ground, a tunnel and a racecourse.

Some shows addressed themes of belonging, identity, grief, Brexit, Trump, fake news, the Syrian conflict, gender and activism.

According to the Daily Mail newspaper, Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society, said: “This has been a very special year for the Fringe as we celebrated 70 years of defying the norm, 70 years of the greatest melting pot of arts and culture anywhere on the planet and 70 years of Edinburgh as an internationally renowned festival city.

“In the current climate of global uncertainty, we were delighted to see an increase of 29 per cent in the number of countries represented in this year’s Fringe Programme.”

In addition, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society launched World Fringe Day in July, which celebrated the birth of the fringe movement that started in Edinburgh in 1947 and has inspired a network of fringe events across the world.

Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Tourism and External Affairs, said: “The Fringe contributes strongly to Scotland’s culture and economy and is key to the growth of our tourism and creative industries.”

Image: Festival Fringe Society