The Stage

Producers may boycott Edinburgh fringe after box office cash delays

Published Thursday 11 December 2008 at 11:00 by Alistair Smith

Full coverage of the Edinburgh Festivals

Exclusive: Producers have warned venue operators at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe that they may bypass the event in future years if ongoing problems with recouping box office receipts are not solved.

Box office reports and payments from the fringe’s main operators have been severely delayed this year, with some producers still having not received full payment for ticket sales more than three months after the close of the festival.

The delay has been caused, at least in part, by ongoing problems with the Fringe Office’s central box office system, which collapsed during this year’s event.

Because of this, results were not passed on to the main venues until mid-October - some two to three weeks later than usual. In one case involving C Venues, this was not done until early November.

The delay has, in turn, affected producers, who have been forced to wait for their money while the venues collate individual box office results with those from the Fringe Office.

Martin Witts, who produced Joan Rivers’ show at the Underbelly this year, told The Stage: “The general feeling in the business is that it’s got a bit out of hand. I know a lot of people are questioning whether it is worth going to Edinburgh anymore - whether that is financially or because it’s a headache. I can’t see why it can’t be an efficient box office system that pays out an estimate or even 50% of matured sales the week after the show. It needs a big shake-up. It’s fine for people like myself who can afford to wait, but it seems to be later and later every year and when you’ve got a smaller producer, it’s very tough.

“The whole ethos of going to Edinburgh is that you’re there to be successful so you can then go off somewhere else after. But what happens is that none of the young producers can afford to do anything between the end of Edinburgh and early the following year, because they haven’t got any money left.”

A number of producers have approached The Stage complaining of severely delayed payments, while some with productions at C Venues and the Gilded Balloon claim that they have still not managed to settle their box office receipts.

A spokesperson for the Gilded Balloon said: “At the moment, there are two or three shows that are being sorted as we speak and the rest have all been accepted.

“It has been a very unusual year. They’ve been later because there has been more of an internal process within the venues double-checking the figures, because of the lack of confidence in the fringe box office reporting. It is one of our priorities to speed this up in future years.”

C Venues artistic director Hartley Kemp admitted his organisation was still processing payments for its companies and this was due to receiving box office figures and monies late from the Fringe Office, as well as general issues with the fringe box office this year.

Ed Bartlam, director of the Underbelly, which has sent out receipts to all its producers, said it was a problem the venues were aware of and were working on to improve.

“This year there were huge problems with the ticketing,” he explained. “We had to go through sales figures with a fine tooth comb to make sure they were correct. In the future we will be looking at ways that we can pass on the money quicker. It looks like the Fringe Office will adopt the ticketing system the big venues have been using for the last couple of years. If that happens, it will streamline the process, making the collating of information easier and quicker.

“But, on the other hand, the fringe has to deal with a large number of shows, so it is not going to be as quick as a regional theatre because of the number of box office figures we need to go through.”