Ukrainian news channel Ukraine Today interviewed Ms. Victoria Romanova (NTU’s Deputy Head and Head of Delegation at Eurovision) and shed more light on the final deliberation of the 2017 Eurovision host city race, event financing and on the ESC 2017 preparations.

Victoria Romanova revealed more details regarding the 2017 Eurovision host city race and explained that the ESC 2017 Organizing Body ( EBU, NTU and the Eurovision 2017 Committee) had taken a joint decision to postpone the announcement of the 2017 Eurovision host city in order to give the 3 bidding cities more time to enhance their respective bids and submit further details and information to the organizing body.

The ESC 2017 organIzing body’s quest is to give the bidding cities more time to improve their respective drawbacks: be it the potential venues, security, hotels and accomodation, airport, international connections, transport, press centre etc.

For a city to be elegible to host the Eurovision Song Contest it has to comply with the EBU’s rules, regulations and criteria.

The announcement of the 2017 Eurovision host city was originally scheduled to take place on 27 July, but has been postponed indefinately.

Thus Ms. Romanova went on to say that all 3 finalist cities (Dnipro, Odessa and Kyiv) had worked very hard in order to showcase their respective bids and were very enthusiastic to welcome the Eurvovision bandwagon next year.

Watch Victoria Romanova’s full interview regarding Eurovision 2017 on Ukraine Today

She added that the organizing body consisting of the EBU, NTU and the 2017 ESC Committee decided to give additional tasks to the finalists so that they can improve their situation, choosing the city and venue is one the most important and vital parts of hosting the contest.

Ms. Romanova says:

The choice of the host city is probably a key decision of the whole Eurovision. This verdict is too important and too crucial to take it in a rush. That’s why, it was a joint ruling of the European Broadcasting Union, organisational committee, and NTU to take more time. We have this time, we have the right to take it in order to receive additional information, additionally fulfilled tasks from the cities, work on it and come up with 100 percent right decision

Ms. Romanova also shed more light on the financing of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest which will include various funding sources: sponsorships, city investment, state guarantees etc. Finacing the contest will not be a problem for Ukraine and Ms. Romanova is confident that the country can deliver a contest of the highest level.

The sources of financing will be the state budget, co-financing by the host city, payment from the European Broadcasting Union and sponsorship sources.

The 3 finalist cities are currently enhancing their respective bids and gathering more details in order to submit the required data to the organizing body. Hereafter NTU and the 2017 ESC Committee will be holding bilateral meetings with each of the finalist cities next week.

Once the organzing body receives all the enhanced details and data from the 3 bidding cities it will study the proposals and come to a decision. The 2017 host city announcement is expected to take place in the coming weeks.

The preliminary dates for the 2017 ESC have been set on 9, 11 and 13 May.