Edinburgh comedy award loses sponsorship
Full coverage of the Edinburgh Festivals
Edinburgh’s premier live comedy award has found itself without a sponsor, following banking company Intelligent Finance’s decision not to renew its deal for this summer’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Founded in 1981 as the Perrier Awards to recognise the best comedy show on the Edinburgh fringe, the award quickly grew to be the most prestigious gong on the comedy circuit. A Best Newcomer prize was added in 1991, but Perrier ended its association with the awards in 2006 when Intelligent Finance, the internet and phone banking arm of HBOS, took over the sponsorship.
Nica Burns, who has run the awards since 1984, confirmed to The Stage that Intelligent Finance had decided not to renew its three-year deal, which is due to end in April. She insisted that this year’s awards would definitely go ahead, although a suitable substitute has not yet been put in place.
A further announcement is due in May concerning the awards. Meanwhile, the company appears to be the first publicly known casualty to the recession of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
Intelligent Finance refused to comment on its withdrawal, but it is understood that the deal was worth in the region of £150,000 a year.
External links
The Stage Online is not responsible for the content of external sites.
To contact the Stage news team email newsdesk@thestage.co.uk or call 020 7403 1818, selecting option 2 (editorial) followed by option 1 (newsdesk).
If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
Follow The Stage on Twitter and Facebook to get the latest entertainment industry news to your desktop or mobile.
Latest news
- Glyndwr Jones to become CDET director
- Glyndwr Jones has been appointed director of the Council for Dance Education and Training, and will replace Sean…
- Derry City of Culture unveils line-up
- New productions by Field Day Theatre Company and Hofesh Shechter have been announced as part of Derry/Londonderry’s…
- Globe announces “midnight matinees”
- Shakespeare’s Globe has announced its programme of midnight matinees for 2012, saying that the 23:59 start time is…
- BBC and Writers’ Guild agree new terms to cover writers in a “digital age”
- A new payment system for TV writers whose work is watched on the BBC iPlayer has been agreed by the BBC and the…
- Cancelled Hair tour revived for one night
- The cast of a planned touring production of Hair, which was cancelled after its producers went bankrupt, will perform…
- David Greig calls Creative Scotland’s funding shake-up “a mistake”
- Leading Scottish playwright David Greig has called for Creative Scotland to suspend its planned shake-up to its…
Content is copyright © 2012 The Stage Media Company Limited unless otherwise stated.
All RSS feeds are published for personal, non-commercial use. (What’s RSS?)
