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Dateline: 28th August, 2006 1.5m Tickets! As the 60th Edinburgh Festival Fringe closes today with over 1.5 million tickets sold, organisers call again for serious support for the largest arts festival in the world. Paul Gudgin, Director of the Fringe said, “This is the 6th year of consecutive growth for the Fringe, and it’s stunning to think that it was only three years ago that we were celebrating selling a million tickets for the first time. It’s now time for Edinburgh and Scotland to acknowledge the value of the festivals and act to safeguard their future”. The growth this year can be attributed to dynamic new venues, such as the E4 UdderBELLY and to the Fringe’s increasing appeal to performers and audiences. Paul Gudgin continued, “It is the 17,000 performers and the hundreds of venue managers who are the lifeblood of the Fringe and make this Festival so great. In a climate of growing competition from other UK and international festivals including Liverpool, Manchester, Adelaide and Barcelona (as highlighted in the Thundering Hooves Report), Edinburgh must remain the most attractive option for performers. I urge the City of Edinburgh Council, the Scottish Executive and their agencies to take the lead and match the ambition shown by the performers and venue managers. It’s only by doing this that we will encourage new and existing talent to return to the festival again and again, so we'll still have reason to celebrate our 100th festival.” Anthony Alderson, Director of the Pleasance, said, "This has been a great year for the Pleasance, most satisfying of all has been the huge success of high quality new work in both theatre and comedy. It is great to see so many talented new young companies come here for the first time, work hard and reap the benefits." Underbelly Co-Directors Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood are also delighted with a successful year for the venue. “The arrival of UdderBELLY and Cow Barn has helped create a new festival hub benefiting all the venues in the area and also enabling Underbelly to continue to programme an eclectic mix of new writing, award winning comedy and the best in music and dance. Taking into account the increase in our capacity this year, we are delighted to announce our box office sales are up 36% on 2005.” It has also been an incredibly successful year for the award-winning Fringe web site, with 51% of all tickets sales by the Times Fringe box office being made via www.edfringe.com. The web site also received 66,946,538 hits in the month of August alone. Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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