Edinburgh Festival Fringe event cancelled

Fringe Sunday called off after organisers fail to find financial backing.

One of the showpiece events of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe has been cancelled after organisers failed to find sponsorship.

Fringe Sunday, which has regularly attracted crowds of 250,000, has been called off after officials tried for nine months to secure backing for the event.

Organisers had warned repeatedly that the future of Fringe Sunday was in doubt because of soaring costs and problems attracting sponsors. It costs around £70,000 to hold the event, which gives the public to chance to see many of the acts performing in the Fringe free of charge.

A Fringe spokesman said: “We’ve been trying to secure a sponsor for several months but, despite constructive discussions with a number of potential backers, we’ve unfortunately been unable to do so.

“We really needed a headline sponsor to ensure we could meet the costs of staging the event and avoid having to meet the costs out of our own finances. We have to stress that this decision only relates to this year’s event. It is not cancelled indefinitely.”

Fringe Sunday was first staged in the High Street in 1981 and forced to relocate to Holyrood Park because of overcrowding, when 40,000 people turned up. It was staged there every year until 2001 when it relocated to the Meadows, again to create more space.

First held in 1946, The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has become the biggest arts festival in the world. The 2008 Fringe featured 31,320 performances of 2,088 shows in 247 venues.

However, a report into last year’s Fringe found failings in the way the organisation was run being blamed for bringing the event to the brink of financial collapse. A new box office system failed to operate correctly, resulting in thousands of tickets remaining unsold, and ticket sales in total dropped by ten per cent.

Jon Morgan, who was director of the Fringe during the ticket problems, left after just a year in the job.

The Fringe Society, which runs the event, needed a £250,000 emergency funding package – including a loan of £125,000 from Edinburgh City Council, a £65,000 grant from the Scottish Arts Council and a £65,000 funding advance from the Scottish Government – to keep it going.

Source: STV

Tags: Event Sponsorship, Fringe Sunday cancelled, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Category: Festival News