Updated on 7 March 2007

The media and organisers would have you believe that, some years, up to 385,000 people go to Manchester's gay event. I suggest it is 50,000 at the parade and only around 35,000 buy a ticket for the fenced-off gay village

The Internet has made it much more easy to look through old newspaper reports. Newsbank.com is one site that lets you search the contents of many newspapers from around the world. It includes issues of the Manchester Evening News since 2001.

If you have a library card for Manchester Libraries, you can get access to Newsbank and several other resources from your home computer.

Then, of course, there are the facts and figures, articles and press releases that remain on the web from years ago. All of which can come back to haunt any organisation that isn't telling the truth...

Once you start looking up information about Manchester's annual gay event, all kinds of confusing and conflicting figures emerge.

I've come to the conclusion that there has been a deliberate attempt to 'hype up' the event over the years, to make it seem bigger and more successful than it really is. In recent years this has been so you'll buy a ticket...

If a person buys a ticket for Manchester Pride. Arrives expecting 300,000 people due to the hype, but finds there are just 35,000 people at the event, that is really quite dishonest.

I suspect that most of the figures have originated in press releases from the organisers. The disturbing thing is that newspapers and websites seem to just regurgitate these numbers as fact.

In the article 'Fantastic gay pride festival sets record', published in the Manchester Evening News on 2 September 2005, it states that 2005 was 'the biggest ever Manchester Pride Festival' and:

'The "Big Weekend" in Manchester's Gay Village provided a huge boost with ticket sales up by 50 per cent.

One of the highlights of the 10-day event was the Key 103 Pride Parade through the streets of Manchester, watched by an estimated 50,000 people.'

If ticket sales were up by 50 percent, and most of the money for good causes comes from ticket sales, how is it that the amount raised for good causes in 2005 is the lowest amount since 2002?

Amounts raised for good causes after costs:

2005: £120,772
2004: £129,426
2003: £127,690
2002: £65,000 (the last free event)

Five days earlier, on 28th August 2005, in the article 'Thousands flock to Gay Pride Parade', the Manchester Evening News reported that 'more than 200,000 people watched the parade'. A figure that is four times the number it had stated on 2 September.

The BBC website said that 45,000 were expected at events from Friday until Monday in 2005.

Yet, almost a year later, in summer 2006, the Manchester Pride website carried the following text: 'The Manchester Pride Parade is an ideal opportunity to put your business in front of over 250,000 people'. What was this 250,000 figure based on?

Can it be that they are misleading advertisers and the paying public by inflating the actual parade attendance figure by 500%?

This website has what it calls an 'official press blurb from the organisers'. In which, Andrew Stokes, Chief Executive of Marketing Manchester and Manchester Pride Chairman is quoted as saying:

'Manchester Pride 2005 was a tremendous success ... Over 40,000 people paid to be part of the celebration'

Elsewhere in the same press release it says 'well over 45,000'.

Eleven months earlier, in the October 2004 issue of outnorthwest magazine, Paul Martin of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation refers to the '36,000' who attended Manchester Pride 2004. So how is that a 50% increase in ticket sales in 2005 by any stretch of the imagination? A 50% increase on 36,000 would be 54,000.

On 25 August 2006, the Manchester Evening News published yet more contradictory information in the article: 'Record crowds predicted for Pride' (read it here). In it, they report:

'Early ticket sales suggest about 40,000 people will attend the four-day bank holiday event - smashing last year's record of 35,000 partygoers.'

As we've already mentioned, a year previously, on 2 September 2005, the Manchester Evening News had stated that ticket sales in 2005 were 'up by 50 per cent' compared to 2004. But, now in 2006, they say that ticket sales in 2005 were actually about the same as they were in 2004 (around 36,000 in 2004 according to Paul Martin).

In the Manchester Evening News article 'Agency to make Impact on Pride', dated 11 March 2005, and about a PR agency being used for the first time, it states:

'The annual Manchester Pride event - one of Europe's largest gay festivals - has formed a strategic relationship with Manchester's Impact Media PR, who will work free of charge to promote an event expected to attract more than 200,000 visitors to the city this summer.'

Remember, you can't get into the gay village at all, for the entire weekend, without buying a ticket. So how many people will come to Manchester for the event and not buy a ticket? I suggest very few.

It seems that 150,000 of those 'expected' people didn't show up in 2005. They didn't go to the free parade (watched by 45,000 according to the BBC and 50,000 according to one Manchester Evening News article) and they didn't buy a ticket (up to 45,000 tickets sold to get into the gay villlage, depending on who you believe).

And, if the organisers expected 200,000 people, but only 50,000 watched the parade in the end, how can they describe 2005 as 'the biggest ever Manchester Pride Festival'? If 50,000 is the 'biggest ever' why did they ever 'expect' 200,000?

The truth is, they never did expect 200,000. That was just a blatant lie to get you to buy a ticket and come along expecting a huge event.

'Fifty thousand partygoers' in 2005, says this page on the visitbritain.com website:

'Last year’s festival saw over 50,000 revellers descend upon the city, and this year the number is expected to grow even more.'

I don't think you can honestly describe the mums, dads and kids who watch the Saturday parade as 'partygoers' or 'revellers'. You couldn't party' in the gay village unless you had a ticket. And there is that word 'expected' again.

Going further back, John Hamilton, the Chair of Manchester's Village Business Association, is quoted as saying 'over 100,000 people were estimated to have attended the daytime activities in the village over the weekend' in 2002.

So it seems attendance in 2005 may have been down to less than half what it was three years earlier. In which case, how can 2005 have been the 'biggest ever'? Or maybe they were exaggerating in 2002 also?

But wait... Let's look at 2004 again. It seems that Manchester Pride 2005 only attracted one fifth of the people who went to the 2004 event! The Manchester Evening News article 'High fliers on parade', published on 30 August 2004, contains this paragraph:

'The weekend was the highlight of the 10-day celebration, and hosted the largest ever mass blessing for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender couples. An estimated 250,000 people attended the event, now firmly established as one of the UK's biggest gay festivals.'

A press release on the Manchester Pride website says:

'The ten-day festival drew upwards of 250,000 people'.

Yet, as already mentioned, in the October 2004 issue of outnorthwest magazine, Paul Martin of the Lesbian and Gay Foundation refers to the '36,000' who attended Manchester Pride 2004. At most, £332,000 was raised from ticket sales in 2004 and most tickets were sold at £10 each.

During the weekend, they couldn't get into the gay village area at all without a ticket, so what exactly were the other 210,000 people doing?

36,000 or 250,000 people? That's a bit of a difference... And then down to just 50,000 watching the parade in 2005! What a disaster. Yet the organisers still described 2005 as the 'best ever'. So which is the true overall attendance figure for 2004? Take a guess...

This page from 2003, from Manchester City Council, claims that the organisers of Manchester Europride 2003 'estimated' that some 300,000 people would take part in Europride 2003, 'with more than half coming from overseas'. But, in fact, In the end they only sold about 36,000 tickets.

But, there's more. Going even further back, a report in the Manchester Evening News dated 29 August 2001 ('Fury over rubbish left by GayFest revellers') claims that:

'on the Saturday 385,000 people turned out to watch the parade'.

Just to put that figure into context... The entire population of the City of Manchester is only 437,000.

385,000 people watching the parade in 2001 and down to just 50,000 watching it in 2005! What a disasterous slump in attendance there has been. Or could it be that some of these figures aren't true?

I was there taking photographs of the parade on the street in both 2001 and 2005 and one of those figures is very wrong. I would have said around the same number of people both years, or possibly slightly busier in 2005.

Why does any of this matter? If I travelled to a destination expecting 200,000 or 385,000 people at an event, but then got there to find only 30,000 people, I would be pretty annoyed. I would feel I had been tricked. A shop wouldn't get away with misrepresenting goods in this way, so why should an event that is selling tickets?

You can only 'spin' the figures for attendance and charity income for so long, before people start to see through the hype and get annoyed. And, with so much information at our fingertips these days, it is so easy to catch them out.

Of course this could all be solved if Operation Fundraiser and Manchester Pride published clear figures for attendance, ticket sales and costs each year. But they don't and I suggest this is a deliberate policy to stifle debate on the performance and future direction of Pride and to hide the real figures from the public as much as possible.

In the long term this is not good for Manchester's Bank Holiday gay event.

UPDATE: I've done a detailed analysis. 250,000 do not watch the Parade as the organisers claim. The true figure is ‘tens of thousands’ and here is the proof.

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