The Stage

Underbelly breaks Edinburgh fringe ranks and goes on sale early

Published Friday 5 March 2010 at 16:16 by Thom Dibdin

Bosses of the Underbelly fringe venue have broken with convention and put tickets for three of their major Edinburgh Festival Fringe acts on sale on their website three months earlier than normal.

The ticket sales, which opened on Friday, are for stand-up comedians Danny Bhoy, John Bishop and Jim Jefferies at the McEwan Hall, which will be used as a comedy venue for the first time this August. The 1,020-seat Hall is used year-round for student’s classical concerts and is the venue for conferring Edinburgh University’s degrees.

Fringe venues don’t usually start ticket sales until after the fringe programme launch in early June.

While agreeing that Underbelly’s move is a precedent-setting break with convention, a spokesman for Underbelly told The Stage that every other festival in the world goes on sale far further in advance than the Edinburgh fringe.

He added: “Maybe that was a precedent that was set when the fringe was smaller. It can only benefit people if there is a longer lead time for selling tickets. It is still great to have that announcement of the Fringe Programme, but if there are shows that can go on sale in advance, I don’t see why they should not.”

Meanwhile, the Edinburgh Festivals passport this week received recognition as a groundbreaking tourism business concept at Scottish Tourism Week with a £30,000 innovation award.

The passport is a collaborative product that gives the holder tickets to three festival shows over a day, picked from the Fringe, International, Jazz, Book and Art festivals and the Edinburgh Mela. It will allow visitors to buy a package in the same way as the highly successful Edinburgh Military Tattoo, as part of a holiday package or hotel offer.

Once individual programmes are finalised, Edinburgh Festivals will select a bank of tickets across the 6 festivals to “ensure a wide-ranging and exciting itinerary for each customer”. The festivals will work with a festival critic to select the very best in art and performance and allocate itineraries to clients ahead of public sale.