Edinburgh festivals hope to launch joint box office for all 11 August events

Key points

• The Edinburgh festivals hope to launch a single box office for all the city’s 11 festivals to make it simpler to buy tickets and profit from the “lake” of customer data they hold.
• Festival directors hope a universal box office will allow them to increase ticket sales and attract a wealthy corporate sponsor, such as Mastercard, to offset deep cuts in public funding they expect to see in coming years.
• The idea has been under discussion in private for some time, sources have said, but it jumped in prominence when the Succession star Brian Cox said one was desperately needed during an arts sector panel discussion last year.
• The festivals involved in the plan, including the main international festival, will soon invite bidders to investigate how to merge the ticketing operations and data of all 11 events, which in 2024 sold nearly 4m tickets in total.
• Others include the book...