Fringe overcomes ticket backlog

Published Friday 25 July 2008 at 11:35 by Thom Dibdin

Full coverage of the Edinburgh Festivals

Ticketing problems caused by failures in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s website appear to have been surmounted, meaning that all customers should have tickets in hand well before the start of the festival next week.

However, fringe staff warned The Stage that full ticket sales reports - crucial to venues and producers and due last week - are still not available.

Fringe spokesman Duncan Fraser told The Stage that “over one hundred thousand tickets will have been posted out by Friday [25 July] and all those purchased for shows up until the middle of week two [August 14] will be posted in the next few days.

“We had 150,000 tickets to post out at the beginning of this week, so we are well on our way to making sure everybody has their tickets in their hands.”

Anyone who has bought tickets through edfringe.com since July 9 will have done so on a collect at box office basis.

Although ticket printing is now going smoothly, staff in the fringe office are still working to get the box office system up to full speed. Of particular concern to fringe venues and producers is that the reporting functions of the system, which allow them to see full details of tickets sold, are not yet available.