Sweden: SVT will announce the host city of next year’s contest, next week!
As we have already written in many of our past articles about the host city race of next year’s Eurovision Song Contest in Sweden, the announcement is expected to be made on the 7th of July.
Göteborgs-Posten today confirms that, by the end of next week, SVT will announce the city that will get the chance to host the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, following Loreen’s second victory with the song “Tattoo”. That means that in less than a week from now we will know which of the cities that have submitted their bid, will be selected to host next year’s contest!
But how probable is it for each city that has submitted a bid, to host next year’s contest? Read more below!
Four cities in the hopes of hosting next year’s contest
Malmö has always expressed a strong interest in hosting the contest and they have officially submitted their bid to host next year’s contest! Malmö had hosted it back in 1992 and also in 2013 after the first victory of Loreen in 2012 with the iconic Swedish entry “Euphoria“.
Currently, Malmö has the biggest chances to host next year’s contest and less than seven days are left until the announcement which will make it clear if Malmö will get selected to be the host city or not!
As already reported, Stockholm has officially submitted their bid to host the contest that Loreen brought back home with her second victory one month ago.
Stockholm currently faces a few issues, mostly regarding the hosting venue of the contest. Friends Arena is booked for Taylor Swift’s concerts on the 17th and 18th of May and Tele2 Arena is booked throughout May for the football matches of AIK and Hammarby Fotboll respectively.
Another issue that has come up, is the fact that the hosting bid of Stockholm City, includes plans to build a temporary arena from scratch, at Frihamnen port of Stockholm, which will then become the center of the event and the arena, which will hold between 11,000 and 15,000 people, will also remain for a limited time, then it will be removed.
According to Aftonbladet’s Fredrik Björkman, Moderaternas, or Moderates in English, a liberal-conservative party, strongly opposes to the case that such a decision is taken. More specifically, Dennis Wedin, opposition city councillor of the political party, has mentioned:
“It is unacceptable that Stockholm’s taxpayers should be stuck with building a new arena linked to this when we have so many other core municipal activities that need money right now in a tough financial situation. It sounds very tone-deaf!”
Following the submission of Stockholm, Gothenburg wouldn’t miss out on submitting their own bid to host the contest next year. Gothenburg has only hosted the contest back in 1985 and it seem like they are quite eager to host next year’s contest.
However, Scandinavium, which could be the venue to host the contest in case Gothenburggets selected as the host city of 2024, has some accessibility issues that might not allow the city to be selected. For the same reasons Gothenburg bid had gotten rejected by EBU in the recent past.
According to reports from SVT, Gothenburg’s political majority back the city council’s bid to host next year’s contest! This came up from the announcement that the city’s red-green party gave, on Wednesday evening.
Municipal councillor Daniel Bernmar has stated:
”It would benefit both the citizens of Gothenburg and cultural life. We can do this with large international events, so we see it as positive”
Örnsköldsvik has never hosted the Eurovision Song Contest before. Övik is a small city up north in Sweden, in Västernorrland with a little less than 33.000 inhabitants.
Örnsköldsvik had hosted this year’s Melodifestivalen Semifinalen at Hägglunds Arena, where the arena looked a bit tiny compared to other shows of the tour. The municipality in order to tackle any accommodation issues and to be able to welcome all the event visitors, said that cruise ships in the harbor will be used as additional accommodation.
This came as a response to several reports back in the beginning of March, of rip-off prices to a rather limited and not decent enough selection of hotel rooms when the Semi-Final show of Melodifestivalen took place there, making us think that the chances of Örnsköldsvik hosting the contest are a bit tad.
Sweden will host the 68th Eurovision Song Contest after Loreen’s iconic second win with the song “Tattoo“:
Stay tuned on Eurovisionfun for all the news regarding the Eurovision Song Contest 2024, in Sweden!
Sources: Göteborgs-Posten, SVT, Aftonbladet
