Eurovision song contest 2025: Host city Basel has voted on spending millions on event
Voters in the Swiss city of Basel have overwhelmingly approved it putting up about $60 million towards hosting next year’s Eurovision, meaning the song contest will go ahead with its customary razzmatazz.
Final results showed 66.6 per cent of voters in the Swiss city backed putting taxpayers’ cash into staging Eurovision 2025. The turnout was 57 per cent.
“I am delighted for Basel and for the project team, which has already invested a lot of passion in organising the Eurovision Song Contest 2025,” Basel City regional president Conradin Cramer told AFP.
“For Basel, the ‘Yes’ means that we will be able to welcome visitors from Switzerland and Europe with open arms and offer them a wonderful program.”
Eurovision is popular closer to home, with SBS having brought the contest to Australians for more than 40 years. Last year, more than 2.2 million Australians tuned in to watch Malmö, Sweden, across SBS’s live and prime-time broadcasts.
Australia’s entrants, South Australian electronic music duo Electric Fields, were the first to sing in an Aboriginal language on the Eurovision stage.
Swiss singer Nemo , giving Switzerland the right to host next year’s 69th edition.
Basel, on the northern border with France and Germany, was selected to stage the event.
However, the small, ultra-conservative, Christian fundamentalist Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) party garnered enough signatures to secure a referendum on whether the almost 35 million Swiss francs (about $60.1 million) approved by regional authorities for the show should be granted.
EDU board member Philippe Karoubi said the competition had become “completely instrumentalised to promote ideologies” like “wokeism” and trans rights.
He criticised the contest for staging what he called “blasphemous performances”, some verging on “the occult”.
Eurovision is a non-profit event, mostly financed by weighted contributions from participating public service broadcasters.
However, Eurovision says that “given the benefits that will flow” to host cities, they must also make a contribution.
The contest will be staged at an indoor arena in Basel called St Jakobshalle, with semi-finals set for 13 and 15 May. The final is to take place on 17 May.
Fans without tickets for the arena will be able to flock to the 40,000-capacity St Jakob-Park football stadium across the street to watch the final on a giant screen, and see performances by former Eurovision stars.
Meanwhile the Steinenvorstadt district, known for its bars and cinemas, will be transformed into “Eurovision Street” with a range of events to be held over about 10 days .
Had voters rejected granting the money, Eurovision 2025 would have been scaled right back to just the show itself, with no public events outside the main venue.
