...but only for shows that pay

Last year, the Edinburgh Comedy Festival was criticised as being a ‘cartel’ between the Assembly Rooms, Gilded Balloon, Pleasance and Underbelly that threatened to undermine the Fringe.

However, this year other venues and performers can get into the Comedy Festival programme, providing they pay. Comedy Festival bosses say the £500 represents a good deal, as it will buy inclusion in 400,000 brochures and on a website that attracted 2.2 million hits last year.

A joint statement put out by the directors of the four venues said: ‘There were concerns last year that Edinburgh Comedy Festival was in some way a “breakaway” festival from the Fringe. We would fully hope that all these worries have now been firmly put to rest.

‘We understand that there has been some criticism of this amount, however, we as venues have always charged for marketing our shows.’

They added that their aim was to increase the profile of comedy at the Fringe to pull bigger audiences and ‘to encourage more and more fresh young comedy talent to come to Edinburgh: Making Edinburgh as vital a rite of passage for young comedians as it has always been for many other performers.’

But Tommy Shepherd of The Stand Comedy Club, a stanch critic of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, said: ‘It's just another thinly veiled attempt to extract money from aspiring young comics. They will try to dupe them into thinking that they need to be in this publication, when in fact they don't.

‘I can't actually see why anyone would want to advertise their show in another venue's brochure  - it can only be confusing for the punters and an unnecessary expense for the performers.’

There are also fears that the very existence of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival will mean a two-tier Fringe, between those willing to pay their £500 – on top of the £328 + VAT it costs to be in the Fringe progamme – and those who choose not to.

The landscape of the Fringe is further confused by two separate free festivals, and a Five Pound Fringe, all being marketed separately and spanning several venues.

The ‘big four’ venues were hoping to secure sponsorship worth at least £500,000 last year, but no headline backer was found. They sold 800,000 Edinburgh Comedy Festival tickets last year – and came to the aid of the Fringe when its box office system collapsed on the first day of Fringe sales.

Published: 23 Mar 2009