Exclusive:Edinburgh Festival Fringe becoming 'more Scottish festival' due to rising costs - Underbelly bosses

Ed Bartlam and Charlie Wood, who launched Underbelly in 2000 with a single venue and now run 20 venues across four main sites, say more tickets are being sold to Edinburgh locals and other Scots, as people from further afield are increasingly priced out of the Fringe.

Mr Bartlam and Mr Wood recall the early days of their time at the Fringe as “totally organic”.

“Charlie and I wanted to do a few shows in an interesting space, and we didn't set out to operate a venue,” recalls Mr Bartlam.

They paid “a couple of hundred quid” to put on three shows in what was required to be a “dirty and grimy” space to create atmosphere.

“We didn't get a license on time,” Mr Bartlam adds. “We were late opening. We built the bar out of bookshelves that we found in the library [above]. We definitely gave away more drinks than we sold. But it was this rather ramshackle, but proper Fringe experience and and then we thought ‘well, we'll carry on doing it’.

“Although we've grown a lot since then, I feel like Underbelly is still about putting on interesting shows, diversity and creating atmosphere and a sense of fun. That's what continues to run through what we programme and what we produce and what we built here.”

They described an opening event for their 600 staff this week as “emotional”.

“Charlie said to them, looking out onto this sea of people, that most of them weren’t born when Underbelly started,” says Mr Bartlam. “It was quite a moment.”

The pair say ticket sales data shows that, increasingly in recent years, more people are visiting from Scotland, rather than from England or overseas. Underbelly itself sells 70 per cent of its tickets to people with a Scottish postcode.

“The one big reason is the cost of accommodation,” says Mr Wood, describing the issue as a “regulatory, legislative challenge”.

“This is made worse this year by the timing of the of the the Oasis and the AC/DC concerts. There are only so many hotel rooms and there's 80,000 people going to each of those concerts. That's going to put up the price, not just at those weekends, but across the month. That makes the cost of both for an artist to come stay here and for audiences outside of Edinburgh to stay here more expensive.

“The question is, if it’s going to cost you several hundreds, if not thousands of pounds to stay here for the weekend, do you want to do that? So it means there's more of a choice about whether to be at the Edinburgh Fringe than perhaps there was 25 years ago. There's an economic reason that is driving this to be increasingly a Scottish audience-based festival.”

He adds: “That's great. It's brilliant that Scotland, Edinburgh, opened its arms to this festival so brilliantly, and is so welcoming of it. But it does mean to be on the flip side that we are seeing less audiences from England.”

In response, the pair say they programme an increasing number of shows suitable for children, targeted at local families.

“We're not driving that demand, we're responding to it,” Mr Wood says, adding the Fringe has become “more accessible” to locals.

However, he points to the roots of the Edinburgh festivals, created in the wake of the Second World War to use culture and the arts as a means of healing and bringing people together after the devastation of the conflict.

Mr Wood says: “It is critical that the Edinburgh festivals are rooted in Edinburgh and in Scotland. That's where they're born, both from an artist point of view, from a production point of view. They are a crown jewel of Scotland, but they were created partly just after the war to bring together a range different communities - and that must not be lost.

“You can come to Edinburgh and see work from across the world. If that is one of the brilliant things, the unique things about this month in August, then surely the shows should also be enjoyed by audiences from across the world. To maintain that uniqueness, audiences must be diverse. It's not to say that people aren't coming. Of course they are, but it's not the same as it used to be.”

He adds: “In order to maintain the brilliance and the diversity of the festival, both in terms of programme and the audience, these things need to be taken really, really seriously.”

Mr Bartlam says he believes current ticket prices, which the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society said this week are around £13 this year, are “incredibly good value”.

He says: “Obviously the challenge is that people like to go see a number of shows in the day, or a number of shows in a weekend, and that's when it begins to stack up.”

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The pair view the Fringe as at a peak in terms of size and claim venues will increasingly specialise in genres of shows.

“I think the festival is at a size which is big enough, so if anything, I think there might be some contraction,” says Mr Bartlam. “I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.”

This year’s event will feature 54,474 performances from 3,853 shows. The figure is the second highest since 2019, when a record 4,105 shows were performed, according to new data from the Edinburgh Festival Fringe Society.

“When we launched our Circus Hub, no one had really done circus,” Mr Bartlam says. “There was never an essential place for circus. And obviously Circus Hub has become that.

“I think there will be more of those potentially genre specific kind of venues where people are focusing in on a particular thing. Summerhall has done extremely well, in terms of new theatre, physical theatre, while Zoo does it very well in terms of dance. I think audiences like going to places where they have an idea of what a venue is programming.”

Underbelly is looking to continue to diversify, not only at the Fringe, but in other areas including London, where it opened Underbelly Boulevard in Soho in October 2023. Last year, a production of Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes was performed at Edinburgh’s Royal Highland Centre, as well as in Liverpool and Washington DC.

However, Mr Bartlam and Mr Wood still regard Edinburgh as the brand’s base.

“The Fringe is extraordinary,” Mr Bartlam says. “It is basically built on creative entrepreneurism, because we know there's no funding. It has grown and is what it is, because of artists that take risks, promoters that take risks, venues that take risks, and it's properly entrepreneurial.

“I think that we, probably more than some of the other venues, have grown out of Edinburgh. Edinburgh is still our home, it's where this is rooted. It's where the brand is rooted. It's still the centrepiece of our year.”