ROWAN KEEN is a Fremantle-based arts worker.

EVERY January and February, Perth is painted pink and we’re instructed to feel grateful. 

Fringe World is here. 

The tents go up, the selfies begin, and we all agree – politely, automatically – that the sheer size of it must be proof of success.

But size isn’t success. It’s just size. And in Fringe’s case, it’s now part of the problem.

Fringe is open-access – anyone can register and anyone can be part of the festival. 

That sounds democratic, even noble. 

In practice, it’s an oversupply model: the festival grows, the program balloons, and artists take on more and more of the financial risk, while the festival’s headline numbers keep looking terrific in media releases.

This year, for example, public-facing promotions are proudly spruiking “more than 600 shows” and “over 3,000 artists”. In 2025, Fringe reported 577 events. In 2023, it was 545 shows. 

That trajectory tells you what you need to know: the program keeps expanding.

Now, here’s the awkward bit nobody wants to say out loud: Perth’s audience does not expand at the same rate as the program.

When you add hundreds of extra acts over a few years, you don’t create hundreds of extra audiences. 

You create a more fragmented one.

 The same pool of punters is spread thinner across more choices. 

That might be great for people who enjoy scrolling through options like they’re selecting a Netflix series but it’s brutal for performers trying to fill seats on a Tuesday night when the entire city is being asked to attend everything, everywhere, all at once.

And it’s not just the punters who are divided. Attention is divided, too.

With an ever-increasing number of acts, you also get an ever-increasing number of artists vying for media coverage. 

In a smaller festival, local media can afford to highlight individual shows – especially local work. 

In a huge festival, media outlets tend to cover “Fringe” as a concept: the vibe, the hub, the colour, the ticket sales, the economic uplift, the photos of happy crowds under lights.

If individual shows get covered at all, it’s often the big touring acts – the ones already arriving with public profiles, marketing budgets and a built-in audience. 

That’s not a moral failing by journalists; it’s just triage. 

When there are hundreds of acts, a spotlight becomes a laser pointer. Most people will never see it.

So the burden shifts again – onto artists. Promote yourself. Buy ads. Print posters. Push social media. Hustle harder. Do the street bark. Find influencers. Offer comps. Offer discounts. Offer “pay what you can”. Offer your soul, lightly used.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable economics that Fringe culture has normalised: an arts festival where too many people in the ecosystem are trained to treat free access as a perk, not a problem.

There are industry passes, comps and “if it’s not sold out” arrangements that encourage Fringe participants to see each other’s shows. In theory, that builds community. 

In practice, it can mean rooms full of people who aren’t paying – at the very point the artist is trying to recoup registration fees, venue costs, tech costs, marketing costs and the small matter of their labour.

It’s a peculiar kind of success when applause is plentiful but income is not.

And yes, before the emails arrive, I know the standard reply: “Artists can make an informed decision about whether to participate”. 

That is technically true and emotionally hollow. 

It’s like saying you can make an informed decision about buying a lottery ticket. The decision can be informed; the odds are still the odds.

Open access has benefits. It creates pathways. It allows experimentation. It lets new artists have a go without needing a curator’s blessing. Nobody sensible wants to throw that away.

But pretending that limitless growth is automatically good for artists is the farce.

At a certain point, “more” becomes a substitute for “better”. And “bigger” becomes a substitute for “fairer”. 

The festival gets to celebrate its scale, while performers are left comparing notes in the quiet aftermath: ticket sales down, marketing spend up and yet another year where breaking even is treated like a personal achievement.

Meanwhile, the broader city benefits from the atmosphere. 

Restaurants are busy. Bars are full. Parking meters hum. 

Everyone gets a slice of the Fringe month – except, often, the very people providing the reason anyone goes out in the first place.

If Fringe wants to remain credible as an artist-supporting festival, it needs to stop behaving like its only measure of health is how big the program looks.

A cap on acts wouldn’t “kill the Fringe”. It would change the incentives. It would concentrate audiences. It would make it more likely that good shows – including local shows – can find the people who would love them.

And if a hard cap is politically impossible, then at least be honest about what’s happening. 

Publish clearer data on artist outcomes. Normalise transparency about average returns after costs. 

Make the economics part of the story, not the secret everyone knows but nobody wants to say during opening week.

Because the risk, right now, is simple: Fringe keeps getting bigger and more artists keep losing money, until the only people left who can afford to participate are the ones who didn’t need Fringe in the first place.

That’s not a festival. That’s a funnel.

And the farce is that we’re all still applauding the size of it.