Bad phone signal hinders our ticket sales, says Fringe chief

She warned without greater investment and policy changes to improve the affordability of accommodation and make it less burdensome for venues to host shows, acts would continue to be discouraged from taking part in the festival. And she said its most vital elements such as street performances, which the Society manages, would be “at risk”.

(Image: © Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society)

In a wide-ranging interview with The Herald McCarthy, who is to step down as the head of the organisation that supports the running of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe after nine years in spring 2025, called for “parity” with how major sporting events like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games are treated by decision-makers in the City Chambers and Holyrood.

The Fringe Society was established 65 years ago to ensure the smooth running of the event dubbed the 'official unofficial festival' by some - and that it remained open to anyone and everyone .

In 2022 to mark the Fringe's 75th birthday it unveiled a new mantra: 'give anyone a stage and everyone a seat'.

But increasingly, in contrast to the abundance of stages and seats across the Capital every August, it is the shortage of beds that looms large.

On Monday the charity released its 2024 review. This said the festival, which sold 2.6 million tickets for 3,746 shows this year, has maintained its “unique position as one of the most important performing arts expos on the planet”. 

But it said the soaring cost of accommodation an “unhelpful policy environment” continued to pose significant challenges. 

As this year’s programme drew to a close McCarthy warned the fragility of the performing arts community was “palpable” as a result of cuts and said the festival must be “protected for the future”.

Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society has operated in a deficit since the Covid-19 pandemic which left the cultural sector fighting for survival. This year, expenditure exceeded income by £226,000. 

However this was “all part of the recovery plan,” deputy chief executive Lyndsey Jackson said, anticipating a return to a break-even position by the end of next year’s festival.

“It was a planned deficit and in line with our financial plan, but obviously long-term that’s not sustainable,” she said, while highlighting that despite shortfalls it has not cut its support to artists or raised the cost of its services which include registration and venue booking.  

Amid the difficult financial backdrop McCarthy was keen to stress the organisation receives no core funding from the Scottish Government “yet the Fringe brings in the single biggest return by far”.

She said: “There was £9.3 billion spent on the Olympics in London. We get £75,000 from the council.

“It’s not just about money, it’s also about recognition that what you’ve got happening in Edinburgh every single August is on the scale of a major, major event. And the idea that you would deliver the Commonwealth Games or dismiss support of the Commonwealth Games by saying ‘well we invest in athletes’. That’s pretty much what we hear – ‘we do invest in artists, we do invest in the companies’ – but what about the platform, what about all that it takes to support something of this scale?”

(Image: © Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society)

A transient visitor levy (TVL) currently being consulted on by Edinburgh City Council is one potential lifeline for the Fringe. The council has proposed allocating 35% of up to £50m a year a 5% surcharge on visitors’ accommodation fees could generate to festivals and cultural venues. 

McCarthy wants to see the council make a specific commitment to spend a portion of this on the Fringe and include representation from festivals and the wider arts community in the decision-making process of how funds are distributed.

Currently, she said, it was just a “theoretical chunk of money” with “no articulation yet of how that would be spent and what it would be spent on”.

But she admitted it was a “huge opportunity” for the festival.

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Speaking at the Society’s Fringe Shop on the Royal Mile, she said the income should be used to improve “things that affect all” such as mobile phone signal in the city centre which was currently “so poor”.

She said: “On one hand, what the Fringe is really successful at is selling tickets for shows and getting people to come and see shows, and that’s the biggest source of the economics of the festival. But if you’ve got somebody who’s standing ready to buy six tickets in their basket ready to hit purchase and then the connectivity goes, then they go ‘I’m scunnered by this now I’m just going to go to the pub’.

“These things that are shared issues that are going to make the whole festival experience - whether you’re at the book festival or at the Fringe - a better experience.

“They should be looking at some of those collective things and putting investment into that.”

She also called on the council to exempt performers from tourist levy charges, which would be capped at seven consecutive nights.

“People might think it’s small,” she said, “but when you’re an artist trying to piece together a budget to bring a show for a full run in Edinburgh, every penny counts and so we’d like to see artists exempted.

“I don’t think that will happen. I think they think it’s too complex to manage.

“All of these people who have taken these risks to create the Fringe every year are now deeply struggling, and to date it’s felt like the city sees the Fringe as something that it can extract more from all the time.”

As the shape of the UK’s first tourist tax scheme begins to emerge ahead of final approval next year, Jackson said there are “concerns across the city and across the sector,” about how much of the income will make it into the hands of the organisations which make the Fringe happen.

“The shopping list on the council’s own behalf in terms of its own cultural venues and cultural heritage is already quite lengthy,” she said. “So how do we get ourselves to the top of the shopping list of things they would like to see?

“The Fringe itself from both an artist point of view and an audience point of view is going to be an enormous contributor to the revenue. So you would expect the Fringe collectively to at least get back what it put in.”

McCarthy cited the local authority’s introduction of licensing charges for every raised stage – which she said was previously it was one fee per venue - as one policy change which had hit organisers hard.

This meant big venues like the Pleasance now had to pay "pay 20 times the amount" they previously paid in licensing fees for raised structures. 

Another is the inclusion of residents who let out spare rooms to performers in the licensing of short-term lets.

The outgoing Fringe chief was clear she thought a ham-fisted approach by the council to regulation STLs in the Capital had wrongly caught people letting out part or all of their home.

She said since she festival's inception this type of accommodation had been a vital part of ensuring there were enough beds for artists, but the cost and administrative burden of obtaining a licence had driven people away.

“If your kids have flown and you’ve got two rooms in your own house, the cost is now prohibitive to be able to just rent out two rooms in your own house,” she said. That has created such an acute situation in what is already a festival that requires people to take a lot of financial risk.

“Why would you completely exacerbate that risk, the impact of which is in some cases a 300% rise in accommodation.”

McCarthy said the practice now known as ‘home sharing’ under the STL licensing scheme has for years been pivotal to the success of the Fringe and was “one of the ways Edinburgh won the bid to host the very first Edinburgh International Festival”.

She explained: “The Lord Provost put out a call for Edinburgh residents to provide rooms in their own houses to put up the artists and visitors that would come to this festival that was to reconnect people after the horrors of the Second World War. The irony. The madness of it that 77 years later when the festivals have built and grown to become established as this world enviable event, and the same city has gone ‘no you can’t put people up in your spare room’.”

She said home letting should be “fully exempted” from the regulations “or it should be so light touch and light cost that it’s not a barrier to people,” adding: “It’s dropped off a cliff because it’s so costly.”

However new solutions in response to the shortage of affordable accommodation, such as such as utilising empty student halls, have proved successful and could be the key to keeping costs down for artists. McCarthy said the Fringe Village set up on Queen Margaret University’s campus for the first time this year made a “real difference”. Additional rooms in addition to this 600 were made available through Edinburgh’s other three universities.

(Image: © Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society)

She added the city also must “unlock” Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) across the city left empty when students go home for the summer holidays if the accommodation crisis is to be addressed.

This would involve students subletting rooms “with the guarantee it would be there for them whenever they come back”.

She said: “There’s something in that, because there’s a huge amount of accommodation in that space.

“If you were doing a Commonwealth Games or an Olympics, that would be being funded. There would be a collective approach to say ‘right team Edinburgh, we need to understand exactly where the capacity is and accommodation that can be unlocked because all these athletes are coming to town’.

“We’ve certainly been asking for that to be considered.

“Between student and landlord and the governing bodies there would need to be permission given to allow to do that, for the student to have some level of security at the other end that they would still get their flat back.”

Cammy Day, leader of Edinburgh City Council, said: “With the potential to bring in tens of millions of pounds a year once it’s established, a Visitor Levy for Edinburgh presents a huge opportunity for us to invest sustainably in maintaining and developing the things that make our city such a great place to visit – and live in – all year round. The festivals should absolutely be central to that.

“Funds from a visitor levy would support cultural organisations to continue to thrive and play a huge part in our city's ongoing success.

"The draft proposal suggests that more than a third (35%) of the income raised by Edinburgh’s visitor levy should be spent on culture, heritage, and events after initial costs. That has the potential to provide the city’s cultural sector with the biggest and most supportive source of new funding since the start of National Lottery funding 30 years ago.

“We’re consulting now to see what residents, businesses and visitors think of our spending plans and we’ve engaged with the Fringe and other festivals throughout. They will continue to play an important role once the scheme is up and running and will be represented on the Visitor Levy Forum.

"We’ve had a fantastic response, with close to 4,000 people taking part, and there are still a couple of weeks left to have your say before the consultation closes on 15 December.”