Edinburgh Gathering loses £600,000

[Galician]

Let's not forget what impact the state of the economy might have had on attendence. I'm sure a lot of people who had hoped to go were either not able to or were too concerned about their jobs to make such an expenditure.

[bricelythgoe]

Beware when a government gets involved.

[Mael Coluim]

The adverising I saw here was brochures at Highland Games that I attended. If there were TV advertisements, I did not see them.

[ThistleDown]

We are mixing Homecoming with the Edinburgh Clan Gathering. They are not one and the same.

The former is a year-long promotion by VisitScotland aimed at drawing folk from the diaspora back to the homeland and with the ultimate goal of a decade of good economic spin-off. It is not yet over and it has -- I daresay -- already been declared a success. Especially so given the world's economic condition after commitments were already made.

What we are talking about here is the Edinburgh "clan" pageant. We must remember that this was a private company undertaking to make a profit for itself from day one. It was able to obtain the grumbling acquiescence but eventual enthusiasm of the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs; that body didn't invest anything other than time and its members' good names, but neither was it (nor they) reimbursed for expenses or otherwise paid.

VisitScotland came on board, but acknowledged its trust position and devoted a very small budget strictly limited to off-shore print advertising tied in with its own Homecoming promotion, with a bit of personal appearance thrown in. The Scottish Executive gifted its premises to the SCSC for a one-day session. Those are the sole costs to the nation. The costs to Edinburgh -- policing and other -- should be thought of as additional to the one-half of 600M sought now by the organisers from the City and its tax base.

The way these things are usually budgeted, all of the sponsorship money should have been assigned to the bottom line with all ticket sales set aside to cover costs -- or the other way around. One or the other and not all mixed together.

Attendance at Day One was in excess of 30,000 and, on Day Two, slightly over half that. Attendance was in all, therefore, more than double what was anticipated. And the march up the Royal Mile? Who could have expected more than did attend to attend. Nobody.

So what went wrong? Nothing.

It was not lower revenues that caused the loss, but vastly enlarged expenditures, costs 'way out of line with the benefits to be gained, in the fore knowledge that these could be recouped when all was said and done.

What does it really matter anyway? For whatever reason the company was unable to get Edinburgh to issue a guarantee in advance. They have, however, been able to prove to the City's purse-keepers that the benefits of the Gathering far outweight the potential subsidy of 300M.

I think we can be assured that if that proof were not there Edinburgh would be satisfied to send the company down the road and put an end to speculation about a second Coming. Oh, sorry -- Gathering. Was it Lord Semple who said that would be three or five years from now? I wouldn't make that commitment if I had just lost a whack of ruples and had to go begging.