By Ashley Fletcher Frampton
aframpton@scbiznews.com
Published June 15, 2009

This year’s Spoleto Festival USA brought in $2.245 million in ticket sales, beating its goal of $2.2 million, officials said.

Meeting the ticket sales goal is an important milepost in balancing the overall festival budget of about $6 million. Festival director Nigel Redden said he expects revenue will match up with expenses, but fundraising continues through the end of Spoleto’s fiscal year in August.

Some donors have made pledges but have not yet fulfilled them, and some donors typically give money in the months after the festival, Redden said.

Previous coverage: Spoleto Festival counts on banks, even amid turmoil

“It’s always a tightrope that we’re walking, and we always need help from our friends,” Redden said. “But I think the results should be solidly black.”

More patrons waited until the last minute to purchase tickets for this year’s festival, which ran from May 22 to June 7, leaving officials unsure of how sales would add up until the end, said spokeswoman Paula Edwards.

Weather was another question mark. Rain threatened to diminish ticket sales for the festival’s finale on June 7 at Middleton Place. But as it turned out, the weather was pleasant.

“Finale is a big day for us, a big sales day,” Edwards said.

Redden said it was a difficult year for Spoleto in many ways, with worries about how ticket sales and contributions would hold up amid a recession.

Last year, Spoleto ended its budget year with a deficit of roughly $372,000, which officials attributed to lower-than-expected ticket sales and a state budget cut of about $250,000. It was the first deficit in 13 years.

As they planned the 2009 festival, Spoleto officials reduced their operating budget by about $2 million, from $8.4 million last year to $6.2 million. This year’s festival included about 25 fewer performances to save money. Redden said previously that staff salaries had been frozen or reduced.

Redden said festival officials looked for additional cost savings during the 17-day event and managed to reduce total expected expenditures further, to slightly less than $6 million.

The $250,000 that the state cut last year did not return this year, Redden said. But the festival did receive $96,000 in a separate state budget line item. That was reduced from the $125,000 budgeted for Spoleto last year, he said, an amount that was already lowered from previous years.

Though Redden expects the budget to balance this year, he said it’s difficult to predict final numbers with certainty.

“Surprises by their nature are surprising,” he said.