Give Londoners priority for New Year’s Eve fireworks tickets
Londoners should to be given early access to tickets for London’s iconic London New Year’s Eve fireworks , Labour London Assembly Member Fiona Twycross has proposed. Dr Twycross reissued her call for a portion of tickets for to be reserved for those who live in the capital after the Mayor of London admitted that just over a quarter of tickets for the 2015 fireworks went to Londoners despite London taxpayers funding of the event.
The Mayor of London confirmed only 28% of the 106,428 tickets sold for the 2015 fireworks went to residents living in the capital. Ticketing for the event was introduced in 2014 in an attempt to better control crowds.
The £10 tickets are priced to cover only the cost of the ticketing infrastructure, leaving London taxpayers to foot the bill for hosting the event despite it being seen as a national celebration. The Mayor confirmed that the total cost for the 2015 fireworks was £3.1m. With only £758,831 raised by ticket sales, the additional £2.3m was met by London taxpayers and event sponsorship. Whilst City Hall said income from ticket revenue and commercial revenue including catering concessions, filming fees and partnership contributions went towards the fireworks, the Mayor admitted this only covered ‘part’ of the costs.
Dr Twycross welcomed that tickets prices only reflect necessary administration costs but said that Londoners should be given priority access to tickets, with a portion reserved for London residents to buy until a month or two before the event. Without such protections Dr Twycross warned that Londoners, who contribute significantly to the event through their taxes, could end up missing out.
Labour’s London Assembly Economic Spokesperson, Dr Fiona Twycross AM said:
“London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks are an iconic event and something the capital should be incredibly proud of. Given it is London taxpayers who stump up the cash to fund the fireworks, we really should give them a fair chance at getting tickets. It’s ridiculous that less than a third of tickets for last year’s sell-out event went to people who live in the capital despite massive demand.
“Of course it benefits the capital to encourage tourism but it wouldn’t hurt the next Mayor to consider reserving a portion, say half, of the tickets for Londoners until a month or so before or at least for residents in the capital to get early access to tickets so they don’t miss out.”
Notes to editors
- Fiona Twycross AM is a Labour Londonwide Assembly Member
- The Mayor’s response to Ms Twycross’ question about the number of tickets sold to Londoners is available here:
Fiona Twycross
What was the geographical distribution of ticket sales?
The Mayor
28% of the tickets sold were purchased by Londoners. 52% of tickets were sold to the rest of the UK. International audiences accounted for 20% of ticket sales. This is an almost identical pattern to sales in 2014. Prior to ticketing, our audience research of attendees to the event also reflected similar distributions.
- The Mayor’s response to Ms Twycross’ question about the money raised by last year’s NYE fireworks is available here.
Fiona Twycross
How much money was raised from the £10 charge for the New Year's Eve fireworks?
The Mayor
106,491 tickets were sold for London New Year's Eve with Unicef, of which 106,428 were bought for £10 each (a total gross face value of £1,064,280). The remaining 63 were free access assistance passes
When VAT and the SeeTickets booking fee are removed this equates to revenue of £7.13 per ticket - a total revenue of £758,831 which goes towards the overall costs of ticketing the event, including the necessary additional infrastructure such as fencing and barriers, toilets, scanning technology, the ticket booth in Trafalgar Square and stewards. It also covers the cost of printing and posting of tickets and ticket insurance in case of event cancellation.
- The Mayor’s response to Ms Twycross’ question about the cost of last year’s NYE fireworks is available here.
Fiona Twycross
What was the running cost to manage the New Year's Eve Fireworks, please provide a breakdown and a comparison to last year's running costs.
The Mayor
The final costs for NYE 2015 are still being finalised. We cannot give a detailed breakdown of each element for commercial confidentiality reasons.
However, in summary, the total cost of the event is circa £3,100,000, of which production costs amount to £2,900,000. Production costs includes creative development, pyrotechnics, lighting and sound, rigging, site equipment, crew and plant hire, stewarding, health & safety, site power, equipment transport, licensing and permissions, post event cleansing, project management, communications, traffic management, ticketing costs, and production insurance. The remaining £200,000 is allocated to marketing and communications, an on-the-night communications hub, Traffic Orders, borough and Royal Parks cleansing contributions, ticket insurance, ticket booth management, and volunteer expenses.
The 2015 costs are broadly comparable to 2014. In 2014 the total cost was £3.02m. The significant difference for 2015 was the commitment of additional funding to stewarding to enable enhanced bag searches and the additional infrastructure required to enable the ticketing of Waterloo Bridge.
The costs are offset in part by income from ticket revenue and commercial revenue including catering concessions, filming fees and partnership contributions. This information is commercially confidential; however we can confirm that revenue levels increased across all these areas from 2014 to 2015.
For more information please contact London Assembly Labour Group senior press officer, David Courcoux, on 07917 087 216. Number not for publication.