What has happened to Festival ticket prices?
Kate Calder’s article for the Edinburgh Music Review Blog raises some very important issues, not just for the Edinburgh Festival, but for classical music concerts and opera houses in Britain and possibly internationally as well. We have discussed this issue with the Festival and will give them the opportunity to reply in full in the Edinburgh Music Review. We did have some internal discussion on whether it was wise to publish an article critical of the Festival so soon after the Covid crisis, and the appointment of a popular and promising young Director. However, the Festival has been used to my criticisms over the years, whether it’s on the lack of opera in the Festival or other issues. In the Edinburgh Music Review we believe it’s the job of critics to be critical whether of the performances, or more general issues around the Festival.
At the Edinburgh Music Review we have warned the Festival in recent years that they were raising prices too quickly and were in danger of pricing their traditional audience out of the festival. Edinburgh has in the past had a reputation for being a very accessible Festival with prices much cheaper than European festivals. Before I was a reviewer I used to attend every concert in the morning at the Queens Hall and every evening at the Usher Hall. At that time pensioners got a 50% discount after July, if the concerts weren’t selling out. My tickets cost £7 in the morning and £10 in the evening, now they would cost £22 in the morning and £32 in the evening. That’s a 300% increase in about five years. I raised this with the commercial director at the Festival at the programme launch and she admitted that attendance figures were 7% down last year. I predict that they may be even further down this year; there are still many concerts with relatively low uptake, even the concert operas which in the past would have sold out quickly. The unannounced flexible pricing policy which Kate has researched can only further drive prices up.
The danger is that Edinburgh will acquire a reputation as a Festival for the well- heeled, and since two thirds of its audience comes from the Edinburgh area and many of them are pensioners who are not well-heeled, this may well backfire. I was at Covent Garden a few weeks ago and paid £19 for a very good upper slips seat and could have got one for £11! Covent Garden is thought to be for the rich but the truth is it’s much more accessible than the Edinburgh Festival. That’s a worry about which the people of Edinburgh need an answer. So over to you Nicola!
Hugh Kerr, Editor, Edinburgh Music Review
Nicola Benedetti’s appointment as Festival Director was widely welcomed, and this year’s Edinburgh International Festival is enjoying well-deserved advance publicity. However, as a long-term EIF supporter, I’ve been concerned to notice increases in ticket prices, which threaten to have an impact on overall sales and the composition of the audiences.
Six weeks ago, I realised that the Edinburgh International Festival had introduced dynamic pricing for its tickets. I bought 9 tickets in late April, at a total cost of £341.50. At that time, the top price ticket for the concert performance of ‘The Magic Flute’ was £64.50 and compared favourably with a top priced seat for the ‘Götterdämmerung’ concert in 2019 at £60. A month later when I went to buy more tickets, I realised that prices had increased, and found that my basket of tickets would then cost £489.50. Only my two bottom priced tickets at £21 were the same, while a top-price ticket for ‘The Magic Flute’ was now £89.
Looking around the website it was clear that as soon as a percentage – around 35% - of tickets were sold, all the ticket prices went up, apart from the lowest price, and these continued to rise as more tickets were sold. This type of pricing, though expected for rail and air travel, is virtually unknown in classical music concerts and opera houses and is certainly new for the EIF. When asked about the rationale for this change, the Media Manager said, “This year the Festival is using a flexible pricing mode with guidelines that we set based on demand,” and claimed that the additional income “allows the Festival to offer concession pricing of up to 50% for those who require it and to fund free events.”
Reactions from friends and fellow EMR critics ranged from puzzlement to disbelief. Those with more eclectic tastes pointed out that increasing prices during the sales period is common for stadium rock and pop concerts. However, the EIF, which runs over three weeks and covers a range of performing arts, has developed a tradition of affordable pricing. With a large proportion of its audiences coming from Edinburgh and surrounding areas, it has catered for enthusiastic supporters of all ages who regularly buy 15 or more tickets/pairs of tickets, often at a variety of prices. A great deal of my musical and theatrical education has been gained at the EIF, in low and medium-priced seats. This year, although those who booked early could choose a range of prices between £13.50 and £40.50 for the Queen’s Hall, and £22.50 and £64.50 for the Usher Hall, dynamic pricing meant that very soon, for popular events, all ticket prices, apart from the cheapest, rose to between £30 and £65 at QH, and from over £50 to nearly £90 at the Usher Hall. Possibly the most extreme example are the Organ Gallery seats (behind the orchestra and singers, no surtitle view) for ‘The Magic Flute’ which went on sale in July for £53.50, now the second lowest price. My Organ Gallery seat in 2019 for ‘Manon Lescaut’ was £12.50!
This policy has been introduced by stealth. The printed programme tells us “Ticket prices may differ from previously advertised prices” but it and the website refer only to the lowest price for each event, e.g., “Tickets from £13.50.” Anyone buying tickets online will see only the prices available that day and will be unaware what they cost a few weeks earlier. The box office is open only by appointment before August, and so there’s no way of knowing how many people have found out the prices online and decided not to buy.
The Festival, as the Media Manager said, has price reductions of 30% for students, disabled people and some others, and 50% for under 18s. 30% off £13.50 is fine, but I doubt there’s been much take-up of seats at 30% off £89. People in these categories who are happy to wait till the last moment can register to buy £10 tickets on the day, although I imagine a disabled person who needs to be accompanied will want to plan further ahead.
I’ve kept an eye on the pricing for six weeks. Even with the high prices that I quoted, nearly all tickets have been sold for ‘The Magic Flute’, the London Symphony Orchestra playing Rachmaninov and Shostakovich and for performances of the Berliner Ensemble’s ‘The Threepenny Opera’ at the Festival Theatre, with only standing places available for the Dunedin Consort’s Bach at the Queen’s Hall. These events may be considered successes for the pricing policy.
But are as many tickets being sold? Events which initially sold well have then failed to fill seats which have become far more expensive. ‘The Rite of Spring’ performed by African dancers at the 3000 seat Playhouse sold a lot of tickets initially in the front of the Grand Circle, thus putting up the prices. Now there are many rows of seats at between £60 and £90 unfilled in the Stalls. An international cast which deserves a large audience may well play to an embarrassingly poor house. There’s a similar situation at the Usher Hall where Tippett’s ‘A Child of Our Time,’ with a great cast of soloists, is currently half-empty.
Is it too soon to criticise? There is still a week till the Festival starts and the other side of the dynamic pricing model is that tickets which don’t sell should come down in price. It will be interesting to see if, when and how this happens.
There are events with a single price which aren’t affected by increases. Some concerts at the Usher Hall and all the concerts at the Hub are a reasonable £25, sometimes with £5 off if you buy tickets for more than one concert. Ali Bain and Phil Cunningham’s concert there sold out almost instantly, as did all performances of National Theatre of Scotland’s ‘Thrown’ at the Traverse, also £25. The Film Festival, under the auspices of the EIF for this year, has recently brought out its programme with ticket and tickets at £10, with £7 concessions are selling well. There’s a lesson there, surely.
In the last two weeks there has been welcome publicity for the free events promised by the Media Manager. Free discussions and talks are taking place at the Hub and the Scottish Parliament. I’m attending an introduction to ‘Tannhäuser’ in the early afternoon before the concert performance. The Festival is book-ended by free music events in Princes Street Gardens and Charlotte Square.
And yet as someone who’s found the Festival affordable for many years, I would be sorry to see long-standing supporters and new audiences, many of them inspired by Nicola Benedetti’s musicianship, deciding that much of the 2023 Festival is beyond their means.
Note. Ticket prices quoted for this year’s EIF are as accurate as I can work out from the ticket website. Ticket prices for previous years are from the records of my ticket purchases at the Hub.
