Adelaide Fringe 2023 has announced a record-breaking year with one million tickets sold.
It is also the first festival in Australia to sell one million tickets.
Organisers announced that the festival hit the one million ticket mark at 10:01pm on the final night of the event, and that a total of 1,000,916 tickets were sold. The total box office value came in at A$25.17m (£14m/€16m/$17m), resulting in $23.9m being paid to artists and venues across the Fringe.
More than three million attended Adelaide Fringe across the 2023 season, which ran between February 17 and March 19.
There were more than 1,900 sold-out performances and a programme that boasted 1,280 shows.
“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,” said Adelaide Fringe director and chief executive Heather Croall.
“I’d like to thank the Adelaide Fringe team who have worked tirelessly this season to make Fringe happen. I must also extend a massive thanks to our generous partners, our incredible volunteers and every single person who attended Fringe and made it the record-breaking season it was.”
Adelaide Fringe also helped to raise A$40,000 for the Fringe Foundation after holding its first-ever Donation Day. This was aided by energy company Lumo Energy and event production company Novatech Creative Technologies, which were matching partners.
The money raised will go towards helping artists to present their work, buy tickets for communities and to make Fringe experiences as accessible as possible. Over 200 grants were given out to artists and venues in 2023.
Minister for Arts, Andrea Michaels MP, said: “South Australia has proven that we are one of the world’s greatest Festival cities. 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 one million tickets, well and truly cements our reputation as the arts capital of Australia.
“This is an incredible accolade for our state as well as for the Adelaide Fringe and I congratulate Heather and her team as well as all of the artists for smashing their box office record.
“The Malinauskas Labor Government nearly doubled the Adelaide Fringe’s funding with an additional A$8m over four years and this triumph demonstrates the savvy insight of that investment in our globally renowned Adelaide Fringe.”
Next year’s Adelaide Fringe will run from February 16 until March 17.