‘Professor Song Contest’ schools us on the costs of Eurovision | DW News

let's take a look at the money behind the Eurovision song contest since it began in 1956 the europe-wide singing Extravaganza has turned into a global brand to host it means a major boost to your local economy but to put on a good show comes at a cost usually of many millions and also remember every country has to pay to take part so where does the money come from and where does it go to get into that I'm joined by Dean vtic who has has written extensively about the Eurovision song contest and has even taught a university course about it thanks so much for being with us Dean and you're in malmer as well I'm in Malmo greetings from the Eurovision City so let's just get down to the basics here I mean how is the Eurovision song contest funded well basically there are four categories of funding first of all there's a participation fee which each National broadcaster has to pay to be part of uh each Eurovision song contest these days that accounts for about uh6 million EUR um in Revenue then there's the host broadcaster which foots the biggest part of the bill around 10 to 20 million euros and um the host City so um this year the city of Malmo is giving a few million euros uh for the staging of the contest and then there's the revenue that comes in from commercial sponsorship merchandising ticket sales and the money that is earned from your votes from the public votes through Tel voting oh yeah I hadn't even thought about the fact that they do make actually money every time someone picks up the phone to to vote for their their favorite country don't they I mean this has been going for for 70 years you don't continue something for as long as that if it's you know at a at a financial loss to your country so who benefits from the way that the funding of your vision is set up well there is a big benefit for the host city of course in recent years we've seen uh tyin and uh Liverpool host Eurovision and they've made big profits from tourism the visitors coming into the city for Eurovision week uh Liverpool for example made 55 million pounds last year um yeah actually I'm I'm going to interrupt you there Dean because because we've pulled the numbers up on this one so let's just have a look at how it all did work out for 2023 hosts Liverpool because the city council said uh as Ste has just pointed out that they received a boost to the local economy of 55 million pounds which is more than 60 million Euros with nearly half a million people attending Eurovision events and 175,000 hotel rooms being sold that month so Dean I mean is is is that a typical story that the host city does get a big local boost Liverpool was particularly successful um Turin also profited not as much as Liverpool but it certainly uh did rein uh a lot of rewards from hosting Eurovision and of course uh in the Years immediately preceding that the profits weren't so great because we were just um getting over the covid-19 pandemic but um generally speaking cities can expect to hugely profit from Eurovision and especially cities like Turin and Liverpool which aren't the capital cities aren't the cities of their countries with uh the most well-known um image internationally or if we look back to bakum hosting in 2012 the most expensive Eurovision ever but it really put Baku on the international tourist map yeah I mean it's the most expensive because they built a whole new stadium for it didn't they they spent something like a 100 million dollars on a a brand new stadium in Baku and what that says there I think is the amount of money they were willing to invest in that it says something about the the pr aspect of this and and the image that you're able to portray if you do win your vision and then get to host it the next year right exactly exactly and it's also a springboard for hosting other events when we think of the world of international Mega events Eurovision is one of the smallest ones and it's a good uh test run for a country which has even bigger Ambitions so a country like aaban which was also hoping to host the Olympic Games or Russia when um it hosted the Eurovision in uh 2009 and then went on to host the Winter Games the Winter Olympic Games in SOI and uh the World Cup so it's good for a country to have Eurovision on its CV as experience in hosting an international mega event and part of that is about the fact that you know a country is able to put on event an event of that side and something that is a particular issue this year is security around well I mean you're you're in malma you you'll have seen doubtless that there is a heightened security level there and I know people are very nervous in Sweden people have spoken to there have said they're very nervous about any potential uh impact of anti-israeli protests there so is it particularly costly this year for for the city of malma we'll have to see the final figures I mean malma the city of Malmo has invested about uh as much into Eurovision as Liverpool did last year so a few million euros but yes this year the uh security threat is particularly High I mean security is always high around Eurovision because it is a very high-profile International mega event but uh this year the threats are very particular considering the um backlash that we've seen regarding Israel's participation in Eurovision and international criticism over Israel's war in Gaza so you do see a very highly uh visible police presence um around the city we haven't seen the protests yet they'll be happening in the next few days but there are a lot of flags um being displayed from people's balconies in their the windows of their homes uh there's a lot of pro Palestinian graffiti so you really do feel that uh this political story is impacting on this se's Eurovision visiting Eurovision Village which is um an area that has public events related to Eurovision I have felt that there are fewer people um at the Eurovision Village than they were in Liverpool in Turin so we'll have to see um what the impact of uh this political situation is on this year's Eurovision that's interesting um to bring it back to the sort of financial it's often joked that a country might not want to host the Eurovision you know a couple of years consecutively indeed some countries have said they don't want to do it because it's too expensive that feels like a something you don't hear about very much these days but is is there truth in that idea that it's a bit more than some countries want to have to pay to do it absolutely we've had examples of that in history Luxembourg winning back to back uh in the 1970s and then uh declining to host a second time round Luxembourg now one of the wealthiest countries in Europe is uh back in Eurovision this year after a break of 31 years and one of the reasons why it wasn't in Eurovision for that time is very likely because it couldn't fit the bill or its National broadcaster didn't want to foot the bill for participating in Eurovision let alone for risking um a hosting of the cont danger winning Israel in yes Israel in the late 1970s also won backto back and then declined to host in 1980 um very interestingly Egypt I found this in the archives of the European broadcasting Union was thinking of entering uh Eurovision in the early 1980s it wrote to the European broadcasting Union saying look we'd like to enter but could you guarantee that we don't win because we don't want to have to foot the of hosting the EUR Israel um that's the strangest sort of corruption I've ever heard it's like fixing a fight so that you don't win no but I read that Morocco did end up taking part in 1980 which came as a surprise to me um three absentees this year and they were absent last year as well are Montenegro Bulgaria and North Macedonia who we've all said that the fee to take part is more than they're willing to to spend particularly when things are quite tight in Europe at the moment uh is it really that expensive to take part for those countries it's about 100,000 euros um not every country reveals how much it is paying um regarding the participation fee or what its budget is for participation in Eurovision but we do have those figures from some countries irand um probably being the best example when we're speaking about these countries from the Balkans because uh they're countries of a similar size or their national broadcasting organizations are of a similar size and Ireland paid uh 105,000 Euros to participate in Eurovision last year but then you have the additional cost of course of staging of um paying for your team um and the total for Ireland was about um over 3 00,000 just over 300,000 so this is what you're looking at for a country uh the size of Island and for those countries for from the Balkans that is um quite a Big Bill considering uh their budgets their limited budgets um so this is why we think what you've mentioned there I think some people will find interesting is that um that the performers themselves are paid to take part in Eurovision of course of course of course but you know different countries have different situations I've met some artists in the past who've um had to pay for their makeup artists their costumes because the uh television station couldn't afford to cover these things so it really depends which country you come from in Bosnia and herova for example the uh National broadcaster is facing a funding crisis it hasn't been able to pay its membership dues to the European broadcasting Union so it's actually not allowed to participate in Eurovision for uh this reason but then you have a country like Kosovo which is trying to um get more International recognition wants to join the European broadcasting Union and definitely wouldn't have a problem in uh funding its Eurovision participation because it really sees Eurovision as being an important tool uh for cultural diplomacy so the stories differ according to the countries there's a a revenue stream that we haven't talked about so far which is sponsorship and people who watch the song contest will notice the sponsors there there there's a a hair brand that's sponsoring it there's an official Airline there's an official cruise line of the concert has your Vis Vision become quite commercialized well it has and this has always been controversial in the contest's history let's say in the late 1970s there was a lot of debate um in Eurovision among the national broadcasters about how commercial Eurovision uh should be and ironically it was the Swedish broadcaster which was most critical of the influence of uh large commercial record companies on the contest and that was just as Sweden's popular music industry was about to Boom following the victory of abber in 1974 in the 1990s we saw the cont is becoming more commercial also because the um European media landscape uh television stations became more commercial and in the late 1990s that's when we started seeing uh more sponsorship and Merchandising allowed uh the contest moved to bigger Arenas uh so you could sell tickets tickets that are actually quite expensive these days uh to more members of the public so that's when we saw the contest become bigger and more commercial so are the sponsors necessary I mean could would the con would the the contest not be viable without these sponsorship deals absolutely absolutely the um sponsors are necessary it would simply cost the participating television stations and the host broadcaster too much uh to host the contest if there weren't these sponsors if I go back to the late 1990s one of the reasons why the contest became more commercial then was that Ireland won four times and had to foot the bill of hosting the contest four times so this is why those um commercial reforms were made to the contest as well yeah there's a there's a I don't know if you you I'm sure you've seen the comedy Father Ted the episode where they they they do a a spoof basically of the Eurovision song contest where Ireland very deliberately sends the worst possible song it can find to avoid having to host it yet again and and and foot the bill but while we're on about the the the host countries and and the benefits for them have we seen a positive impact on for example the the the music scenes and the music genres of the countries that win I'm thinking of things like you know Ukrainian rap after last year or you a Finnish heavy metal after Lord's win a few years back I think so I mean you know the classic example is that of Sweden uh which was really transformed into a popular music superpower after the win of ABBA these days Sweden is um the third country in the world in terms of its uh net popular music exports so in terms of exporting more popular music than it Imports with only the United States and the United Kingdom being bigger popular music exporters so Eurovision was very important for for launching the Swedish popular music industry especially through Abba but uh since then we've also seen the Suites play a huge role in Eurovision as songwriters and composers for other countries and you know in recent years this has just gone to show how um successful the Swedish popular music is how successful the Swedish popular music industry is globally when it comes to Ukrainian rap or um you know Croatian uh Rock course I just said they last year the Ukrainian rap was obviously two years ago wasn't it I should correct myself on that because a lot of people know a lot about this stuff and they will pull me up on it yeah exactly exactly when it comes to other countries as well maybe the success um hasn't been so Global but you know we have Regional markets as well in Europe in the Balkans um in the Nordic countries and very often these Eurovision Stars which we might not um hear of so much across the continent or across the world um you know they become stars in their regions so um it's not just about becoming a global Superstar or even just remaining um a national star but you know there there are also markets in between which Eurovision artists can profit from just to finish let's talk about the sort of the sustainability of of Eur vision and the song contest going forward there have been Rumblings in many countries particularly if they've had a run of you know bad results from the Vision Song contest where they've said let's not take part next year it's not it's it's not worth the money it's not worth the effort it's the way that EUR Vision set up is it still going to be here in another I mean it's been going what 68 years or something like that now is it still going to be here in another 68 I certainly hope so because we need it uh maybe we don't need it so much for financial reasons but what we needed for is to bring us together there is no other cultural event that brings Europeans together like Eurovision does as you said it has been going on every year since 1956 it has only been canceled once and that was in 2020 due to the covid-19 pandemic but you know this is something that has become uh not only a tradition but part of Europe's shared cultural heritage so I think it's worth every penny uh just for that reason alone okay okay Dean butic author and clearly fan of the Eurovision song contest scholar as well of the contest thank you very much for joining us here on DW business thank you very much

Channel: DW News

Views: 13,313

Keywords: DW News, eurovision, malmö24, song contest, boycott, israel, cost, business, economy, dw business

Id: r5lUwiUwJ7w

Length: 17min 50sec (1070 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024