Austrian host broadcaster ORF have announced today their budget plans for 2015, specifying their contributions to the Eurovision Song Contest. €25million has been earmarked to be spent by ORF on the contest. Their expectation is that this will be offset by revenues of €10million. Viennese city coffers will also stump up €10million for a total pot of €35million.
Organisers in Copenhagen set an infeasibly austere city budget of €4.7m, but as we know, costs spiralled to €15m in addition to a €20 million contribution from DR, resulting in a cost of €35million.
Vienna 2015 will receive a budget significantly larger than the intended spend for Copenhagen and Malmö, but broadly equivalent to the final Danish cost, taking into account their overspend.
This spending will pale in comparison to budgets for Baku (where the Azeris constructed the Crystal Hall from scratch) or Moscow (where supposedly 30% of the world’s LCD screens were deployed on a mammoth stage). Estimates of state contributions for Baku 2012 are in the range of €76m, but this will not include all stadium construction costs. Moscow 2009 supposedly received €30m; this may well be a conservative estimate.
ORF’s plan will see Eurovision accounting for 6% of their total TV budget of €394m. ORF are a public broadcaster, receiving most of their income from television license revenue in addition to advertising. Their TV budget is just over a million greater than 2014, despite the extra responsibility/burden of hosting Eurovision. ORF have stated that the lack of an Olympic games in 2015 and a gap in major events on home soil (such as the Schladming 2013 alpine ski world championships) have helped them reign in the sport budget for 2015 to provide more for the entertainment pot.
The 2015 contest will be hosted at the Wiener Stadthalle (pictured above) on 19, 21 and 23 May 2015.
