Record 2.7m tickets sold at the Edinburgh Fringe

tHiS year’s edinburgh festival fringe attracted record audiences with an estimated 2.7million tickets handed out, organisers say.

After 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows in the Scottish capital, organisers said there had a been a 9 per cent increase in ticket sales from last year.

the 2017 fringe saw performances in 300 venues, including a swimming pool, a bathroom, a racecourse and a football ground. themes covered in the shows included gender, Brexit, trump, and the Syrian conflict and refugee crisis.

the festival celebrated its 70th anniversary this year.

Shona McCarthy, chief executive of the edinburgh festival fringe Society, said: ‘this has been a very special year for the fringe as we celebrated 70 years of defying the norm, 70 years of the greatest melting pot of arts and culture anywhere on the planet and 70 years of edinburgh as an internationally renowned festival city.’ Miss McCarthy added that the number of countries represented by performers was bigger than ever.

She said: ‘in the current climate of global uncertainty, we were delighted to see an increase of 29 per cent in the number of countries represented in this year’s fringe programme.’

A fringe spokesman added: ‘More people than ever attended shows at the fringe with an estimated 2,696,884 tickets issued.’