Adelaide Festival 2022 box office sales reach almost $5m, almost 70,000 tickets sold

This year’s Adelaide Festival has lived up to all expectations at the box office, surpassing its ticket sales target with two days to spare.

This year’s Adelaide Festival has lived up to all expectations at the box office, surpassing its ticket sales target with two days to spare.

Over 67,000 tickets to the value of $4.9m have already been sold, including about a quarter of those – or 24 per cent – to interstate audiences.

This is up from $3.7m and 61,000 tickets sold at the same time last year when venue capacities were capped at 50-75 per cent.

The box office figure includes umbrella events such as the State Theatre Company’s Girls and Boys and Konstantin Shamray and the ASQ, but not last weekend’s Womadelaide in Botanic Park.

Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, an installation by Patricia Piccinini, as part of the Adelaide Festival, at Elder Park. Picture Emma Brasier.

In total, more than 227,000 people have attended Festival events – including Womadelaide – as the 17-day program comes to a close on Sunday.

Artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield said the results showed the public was hungry for an arts festival of this quality.

“To keep an international arts festival flourishing while a deadly virus is running rampant across the globe is no mean feat. If delivering 2021 was difficult, 2022 was an obstacle course in which we climbed ladders and slid down snakes with unrelenting intensity,” the pair said in a joint statement.

A scene from Macro. Gravity & Other Myths and Djuki Mala. Village Green, Adelaide Oval, part of Adelaide Festival 2022. Picture: Andrew Beveridge.

“But now with the finish line in sight, the sensory memory of the last 17 days contains unforgettable riches; the best of international performing arts, and the brilliance of Australian artists who have travelled here to showcase outstanding work, or to collaborate on new work of enduring quality.”

Changing venue capacity restrictions during the Festival, which began on March 4, added extra tickets to previously sold-out shows.

But over 15 shows, including three at the late-night music hub, The Summerhouse, were officially sold out over the March 4-20 festival.

Free events were also popular with over 90,000 people taking advantage of concerts, exhibitions and installations such as the opening night Macro, featuring Gravity & Other Myths and dance sensations Djuki Mala, at Adelaide Oval, and Skywhales: Every Heart Sings, in Elder Park.

Almost 75,000 tickets were issued across the program, including free ticketed events.