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Last gasp of Fringe mania for the year
Aug. 21st, 2011 03:08 pm"We'd love to know more about you—and what you think of Fringe. Take our quick, 3-minute audience survey!" says the big blurb on the Fringe site. But it turns out to be nothing but a canned demographics survey administered by a 3rd-party survey company. There is no opportunity to give any feedback whatsoever on "what you thought of Fringe" except a place to leave your email address. Which I did, but have not been contacted.
Here's what I want to say to Fringe.
ATTABOYS: Really well-run festival with remarkably cheerful, efficient and well-staffed volunteer corps. The line management at Rarig Center has been evolving over the last few years and is now utterly awesome.
CONS: I was deeply disappointed by the decision to discourage Ultrapass usage this year with an insane price hike. It took me about 3 years of Fringe attendance to work up to the point where I was sure I would see 15 shows, making the Ultrapass worthwhile. 24 shows is just too high a barrier. So we bought punch cards instead, and attended far fewer shows. In the end, you did get more money per show from us, which I guess was the goal. But the overall effect was that we felt less connected to the Fringe and were far less likely to take a chance on a show that we knew nothing about. We saw some good performance and had fun, but the magic was gone. I expect we'll attend even fewer shows next year, more or less reversing the process of building up to an Ultrapass. I predict that if you continue this policy you will sell fewer Ultrapass tickets each year, resulting in decliining ticket sales (especially at smaller shows with newer performers), and declining revenue.
_____
There is already evidence for my prediction. Clearly, the goal of the change in policy was to increase revenue without increasing ticket sales. Or at any rate, to increase revenue at a greater rate than ticket sales. Instead, both ticket sales and revenue dropped. This is from the Fringe press release.
Preliminary numbers indicate that 48,350 tickets were distributed to the 167 shows in the 11-day performing arts festival. That's a 3.7 percent decline from last year's record of 50,222 tickets issued to 169 shows. Preliminary estimates of this year's ticket sales total $357,567, down 3.1 percent over last year.
Here's what I want to say to Fringe.
ATTABOYS: Really well-run festival with remarkably cheerful, efficient and well-staffed volunteer corps. The line management at Rarig Center has been evolving over the last few years and is now utterly awesome.
CONS: I was deeply disappointed by the decision to discourage Ultrapass usage this year with an insane price hike. It took me about 3 years of Fringe attendance to work up to the point where I was sure I would see 15 shows, making the Ultrapass worthwhile. 24 shows is just too high a barrier. So we bought punch cards instead, and attended far fewer shows. In the end, you did get more money per show from us, which I guess was the goal. But the overall effect was that we felt less connected to the Fringe and were far less likely to take a chance on a show that we knew nothing about. We saw some good performance and had fun, but the magic was gone. I expect we'll attend even fewer shows next year, more or less reversing the process of building up to an Ultrapass. I predict that if you continue this policy you will sell fewer Ultrapass tickets each year, resulting in decliining ticket sales (especially at smaller shows with newer performers), and declining revenue.
_____
There is already evidence for my prediction. Clearly, the goal of the change in policy was to increase revenue without increasing ticket sales. Or at any rate, to increase revenue at a greater rate than ticket sales. Instead, both ticket sales and revenue dropped. This is from the Fringe press release.
Preliminary numbers indicate that 48,350 tickets were distributed to the 167 shows in the 11-day performing arts festival. That's a 3.7 percent decline from last year's record of 50,222 tickets issued to 169 shows. Preliminary estimates of this year's ticket sales total $357,567, down 3.1 percent over last year.
