Reto Peritz, the Co-Executive Producer for Eurovision 2025 has revealed the key reasons Basel was selected to host.
Speaking to Blick, Reto Peritz has explained why Basel was chosen to host Eurovision 2025 over Geneva. Mr Peritz, has outlined three key reasons for Basel selection; the venue, availability and the cities plans around the contest.
With regards to the venue, Mr Peritz explained that while Geneva had the larger venue, all of the infrastructure for the contest at the venue would have had to be built from scratch:
“With the Halle Saint-Jacques, Basel has a concert hall that has already proven itself. Geneva had a generous exhibition hall with plenty of space with Palexpo, but the entire infrastructure would have had to be installed there. Basel does have a smaller venue, but the “Arena Plus” concept and the integration of the St. Jacques stadium compensate for this.”
The Eurovision Song Contest requires significant time before the event for stage construction to take place, as well as availability for stand-in rehearsals ahead of two weeks of rehearsals before the live show. WIth regards to this, the Co-Executive Producer explains:
“Basel was able to make its hall available to us for a week longer than Geneva.”
Finally, the bid from Basel was deemed to be more creative than Geneva’s and embraced the contest more:
“factors such as creativity also played in Basel’s favour. And the fact that not only is there a fan zone planned, but that the whole of Basel is becoming a city dedicated to Eurovision.”
Basel was announced on August 30 as the city that would host the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 following a bidding process. In the first round, bids from four cities (Basel, Bern & Biel/Bienne, Geneva and Zurich) were reviewed by a committee overseen by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The committee shortlisted Basel and Geneva. SRG SSR, the Swiss national broadcaster, then reviewed the two shortlisted bids before choosing Basel as the host city.
Eurovision 2025
Switzerland is hosting Eurovision 2025 after Nemo won the 2024 contest with their song “The Code”. “The Code” scored 365 jury points and 226 televote points , scoring 591 points to win the contest overall and bring the Eurovision trophy to Switzerland for the first time since 1988.
Basel will host the 69th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest on May 13, 15 and 17.
Image Source: Christoph Radtke / Wikimedia | Source: Blick
Geneva does have the infrastructure what a load of rubbish this person is talking