Ever since the Swedish host broadcaster for the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest, SVT, revealed that the hosting had been given to Malmö, there has been a lot more information on the arrangement in the Swedish media, although most of it yet unconfirmed by the organisers.
SVT has been telling fans of the contest to wait patiently for an announcement about tickets for the Malmö Arena in May 2013. As usual, they advise people only to use the official ticket outlets, as announced by the official websites of SVT and EBU. Although some ticket agencies already speculatively seem to be selling tickets, that don’t even exist yet, the arena layout won’t be clear until late this year, after which the tickets will be released.
It has been reported, that City of Malmö and the Scania Regional Council (Region Skåne) together will pay around 20 million SEK (2.3 mill EUR) towards the contest. They expect to get the investment back in tourist incomes. City of Malmö has taken responsibility of looking after the delegates and the visitors to the Eurovision Song Contest, their accommodation and transport, and arrangements of all the auxiliary programming around the contest, while SVT will take care of televising the event. 3000 of the 4000 hotel rooms in Malmö have been booked for the delegates, and what is not needed will be released later for fans and tourists. The organisers expect up to 70 000 people to visit Malmö during the Eurovision events. Many are expected to stay in Copenhagen. The Öresund region is well connected by the bridge with trains running 24 hrs a day.
According to newspaper reports, the brand new exhibition centre of Malmömässan right next to Malmö Arena will house the press centre. Folkets Park is expected to have an outdoor party for 10 000 guests, with big screens to follow the contest as well as a club for the fans. The Eurovision Village will be in one of Malmö’s central squares. Malmö Opera house, previously five times the host of Melodifestivalen, has reportedly received an enquiry to host the opening party on 12 May.
The Executive Producer Martin Österdahl says SVT has the full support of the EBU for the host city choice, and that they will live up to the expectations of taking the Song Contest to another lever and showing the way to the future, like they did in 2000.
SVT will inform on the exact details in due course.
See a series of Malmö photos taken this week on Finnish Eurovision site viisukuppila.fi here
Sources: SVT, sydsvenskan.se, aftonbladet.se, wikipedia
