The 2023 Adelaide Fringe has ended with a history-making bang as the first Australian festival to sell one million tickets!
The mark was hit at 10pm on the final night of the Fringe. In total, the 2023 Fringe sold 1,000,916 tickets for a box office value of $25.17 million.
Adelaide Fringe Director and CEO Heather Croall said, “We are thrilled to have had the season we’ve just witnessed, selling one million tickets in a national first at any festival is an accolade that South Australians can proudly claim.”
The 2023 Fringe saw more than three million attendances and more than 1900 sold-out performances across 1280 shows by more than 6,000 artists.
After two years of travel restrictions, this year’s festival also attracted a record number of interstate and overseas tourists. “We’ve had 45,000 tourists, which is a 35 per cent increase on the other record-breaking year of 2020,” said Arts Minister Andrea Michaels MP .
“The Adelaide Fringe is iconic and the second-largest arts festival in the world, and now, for it to become the first Australian festival to ever sell 1 million tickets, well and truly cements our reputation as the arts capital of Australia.”
Ms Croall said visitors to the state were usually big spenders. The expected average spend of a tourist was around $2,400, she explained. “If you look at that, the economic boost for the state will be over $100 million.
“Hitting this record number is an amazing milestone not only for the festival but also for the state. It is great to see that after the pandemic people are willing and happy to support artists this way.”
The Adelaide Fringe will return in 2023 from 16 February to 17 March.
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Image: Nick Robertson, 2023
