The Eurovision rumour mill and grapevine are hot on the iron these days on which Swedish city and venue will bag the coveted role of hosting the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest next year in Sweden. Is Stockholm planning to build a temporary arena in its port in order to host the event next year? Let’s find out what is the latest on the Eurovision 2024 host city bidding process….
Eurovision fans are super excited to see Sweden welcome the Eurovision bandwagon for the 7th time in the history of the competition next year, thanks to Loreen’s epic triumph in Liverpool last May. The potential dates for the Eurovision 2024 Grand Final are 11 May and 18 May with Stockholm as the front-runner to win the host city bidding race. But all is not gold that shines in the world of Eurovision…..
Stockholms’ three potential venues
Stockholm’s Avicci Arena aka Globen Arena is allegedly going to be renovated and thus will not be available next year and the City of Stockholm’s prefered venue is the Friends Arena in Solna. The other potential venue is the Tele 2 Arena. Both the Tele 2 Arena and the Friends Arena are home to Stockholm’s local soccer teams and this can be an issue as both venues are required to be free for circa 8 weeks in order to host the event as the local soccer teams play matches there and use the stadiums for training. Hence both potential venues could be ruled out if the soccer teams are reluctant to cede the venues for 8 weeks.
To add more smoke to the fire…… earlier this week Taylor Swift published her upcoming tour dates and cities. She will be performing at the Friends Arena on Friday 17 May in Stockholm which clashes with the Eurovision 2024 provisional dates.
This sparked a frenzy amid the Eurovision fandom on the main social media platforms leading to further speculation on the potential Eurovision 2024 host cities, venues and dates. Was Stockholm out of the race? Would the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest take place on the 11th of May? Was Malmo gonna host the event? etc.
Plans to build to new temporary venue
Dagens Nyheter published an article earlier this week stating that the City of Stockholm is planning to build a special temporary venue in order to host the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest.
The newspaper has got hold of documents from Stockholm’s Eurovision 2024 bid. According to these documents the City of Stockholm has submitted a proposal of building a temporary arena at Stockholm’s Frihamnen port district in order to host the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest. The venue will accommodate between 11,000- 15,000 spectators and will remain for some time after the competition in order to hold other events.
According to Dagens Nyheter, Stockholm’s proposal document reads:
As Eurovision continues to grow, it has become increasingly difficult to find suitable and vacant arenas.
Stockholm wants to raise its ambitions further by demonstrating a new sustainable and flexible concept with mobile arenas.
In the wake of these developments Aftobladet reached out to Visit Stockholm in order to shed more light on the matter.
Caroline Strand (CEO of Visit Stockholm) told Aftobladet:
I am not going to comment on it. We have made a bid on how we think Eurovision should be celebrated in Stockholm next year. Now it is up to SVT to judge.
So far a total of 4 cities have officially stated that they have submitted a bid to host Eurovision 2024. SVT and the EBU are set to unveil the name of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in the coming weeks. The Swedish national broadcaster is aiming to select the 2024 Eurovision host city by July.
Source: Dagens Nyheter/Aftobladet
Photo credit: Port of Stockholm
