Basel or Geneva: Next Friday it will be announced which of the two Swiss cities will host the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) 2025. The award will be communicated via the official channels at ten o’clock, an SRG spokesman told the Keystone-SDA news agency.
Editorial staff – August 25, 2024
(Image: SRF)
If Basel is awarded the contract, the St. Jakobshalle will become the main venue for the ESC, according to government President Conradin Cramer (LPD). The government estimates the costs at 30 to 35 million francs.
If, however, Geneva were to host the world’s largest singing competition, the Palexpo exhibition center right next to the airport would become the venue. According to Mayor Christina Kitsos (SP), the costs here are estimated at around 30 million francs.
The future venue can expect a huge advertising effect. After all, 163 million people watched the three live TV shows from Malmö, Sweden last May – according to Swiss television, there were almost 800,000 in Switzerland alone.
Jean-Marc Richard, who has been commentating on the Song Contest for the French-speaking Swiss television station RTS for over 30 years, believes Basel has a better chance of hosting the event. He told the Keystone-SDA news agency that interest in the ESC is greater in German-speaking Switzerland.
Although the response in French-speaking Switzerland has increased since Fribourg’s Gjon’s Tears came third in 2021, German-speaking Switzerland is more closely connected to English and to Eurovision’s entertainment formats.
Hotel night for more than 6000 francs?
Even before the announcement of the two final cities on July 19, hotel prices for May, when the ESC is to take place, were skyrocketing, at least in Basel, as the news agency DPA reported. It referred to room prices taken from the website of a four-star hotel, which amounted to over 6,000 francs per night.
When the agency made a reservation request over the phone, this price was confirmed. When asked, they said that no prices had been announced yet because of the ESC preparations. In Geneva, the price was more modest at 399 francs per night in a four-star hotel near the exhibition center.
Political resistance to the ESC
According to their governments, the prospect of hosting the ESC was met with jubilation in both cities, but resistance also emerged. The Young SVP Geneva threatened to hold a referendum if the city was awarded the contract. “While many important areas need financial support, it is unjustified to spend millions on such a controversial event,” said the Young SVP.
The Swiss Federal Democratic Union (EDU) also announced a referendum in July against the various ESC loans granted to the candidate cities. The EDU demanded that these should be put to the people for a vote.
The risk of referendums is taken into account in the evaluation of the cities that have applied to host the ESC. “The holding of a referendum would not necessarily mean that the city cannot provide the agreed services. For now, it only means that there will be a referendum,” said the head of the SRG media office, Edi Estermann, in response to a query from Keystone-SDA.
If the loan is rejected in the referendum, the contract with the city stipulates what will happen then. The ESC will take place in any case, it was said. The focus is on the television show, which reaches 150 to 200 million viewers. The other events would have to be questioned in this case.
Zurich and Bern stopped
Before Zurich was eliminated from the race as a host city, discontent also spread there from the Young SVP and the Taxpayers’ Association. They launched a referendum against the city’s 20 million loan.
Similar headwinds were also felt in Bern. Representatives of the SVP and the Green-Alternative Party had submitted the referendum form for preliminary examination. “Wonderful,” was how city councilor Simone Machado (Green-Alternative Party) finally commented on the end of the joint candidacy of Bern and Biel.
Wherever the major event takes place, it will be historic. With Nemo’s victory at this year’s ESC in Malmö, Sweden, the singing competition is returning to Switzerland for the first time in 36 years. Traditionally, the competition takes place in the country of the previous year’s winning nation.
In 1988, Céline Dion won the contest for Switzerland in Dublin with the song “Ne partez pas sans moi”, which was then held the following year in the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne.
On May 24, 1956, the first “Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson” – as the competition was called at the time – took place in the Teatro Kursaal in Lugano. Lys Assia competed for Switzerland and immediately scored the most points with her song “Refrain”. (SDA/swi)
