Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter have today reported that SVT have capped next year’s Eurovision budget to a maximum of 125 million SEK – squashing rumours that the broadcaster was planning to throw a much larger budget to the contest this time around.
SVT’s total cost for the 2013 contest was far less than what was originally expected – 125 million SEK. It now looks like that exact figure has been used as a threshold for what the broadcaster plans to spend on the event this time around. SVT’s acting director Safa Safiyari told DN “We know that we are able to make a grand show with this budget. We can handle this type of cost through good planning.”
Only time will tell whether SVT can keep to their budget of 125,000,000 SEK – although, while they managed to successfully keep costs low in Malmö, this may be a lot harder to achieve as transport and venue costs are drastically more expensive in Stockholm and as pointed out by the newspaper, Stockholm’s City Executive had already mortgaged 60,000,000 SEK, mainly on arena renovation.
But perhaps, the most surprising revelation is SVT’s supposed proposal to the EBU that the contest is shifted back one hour, beginning at 20:00 CET (19:00 BST).
SVT’s reasons for this proposal is apparently to keep the show family orientated, with the change in show time ensuring a younger audience will be able watch the contest in its entirety, in all time zones across Europe.
This is not the first time that SVT have approached the EBU to make a drastic change to the contest. In 2013, the broadcaster put forward the idea for the running order of the shows to be producer driven, rather than determined by a draw. This idea was later approved and is still in use today, although many fans have since petitioned the rule and have called for the return of a running order draw.
It’s worth pointing out that its still early days and as of yet, nothing has been officially announced by both SVT & the EBU on their plans for next year’s contest.
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