Ukraine set to announce host city the 24th of August

It’s been a long journey since Ukraine started their bidding process for selecting the host city of Eurovision 2017, but it seems that we have to wait a little more, so let’s rewind to the beginning. 6 cities were selected back in July and two of them emerged as the hot favourites: Lviv and Kyiv.
After all of them showed their proposals to host the contest to the public in a two-hour TV broadcast, “City Battle” three of them were eliminated, including fan-favourite Lviv.
Kyiv, Dnipro and Odessa were officially the three cities that were eligible to host Eurovision 2017, and they all started to shape their proposals; venues, airports, Euro-Club and Press Centre locations…
Kyiv proposed two arenas, the Palace of Sports, which already hosted Eurovision 2005 and Junior Eurovision 2009, but it requirs a serious revamp. Also, it has only a capacity of 10.000 seats. The other proposed arena, the International Exhibition Centre with 24 meters of height and with a proper remodeling could host up to 18.000 seats,  and it seems that the EBU prefer this option rather than the outdated Palace of Sports.
 
        
 
Odessa proposed the Chernomorets Arena, which lacks a roof but after consultations with several companies, they proposed covering the whole stadium and transforming it into a 30.000 seat arena. This option is a fan-favourite, and even Jamala backed the city. Some say that the transports are weak, but according to the director of the airport, a new terminal will be officially opened the 26th of March 2017. Plus it has one of the largest ports in Europe.

Dnipro proposed a revamp of the Dnipro EuroArena, and it’s a quite modern revamp, but it only has a capacity of 9.500 seats, which is even lower than Kyiv’s Palace of Sports. Hotel rooms are the main issues in this city, and the surroundings of the arena are not up to scratch which is a difficult point, considering everything will be happening not just inside the arena but around it.
 

 
After that, EBU, NTU and Eurovision 2017 Organizing Committee officials started an inspection tour to visit all three cities and inspect their proposals on the ground. Jon Ola Sand, the executive supervisor of Eurovision, visited the proposed arenas, airports, and metro stations, and he pointed out that “There is still a lot of work to be done”.
The decision was set to be announced the 1 of August, but the EBU and NTU preferred to postpone it in order to gather more information from the possible host cities.
Yesterday, the DDG of NTU, Olexander Kharebin stated that the decision would be made public no later than next week and already by Independence Day which is the 24th of August. He stated that the biggest issue is that “Ukraine at this moment has no single arena which is ready to host the contest” and that part of the delay is related to the fact that the EBU asked to provide 15 million € as a guarantee, in light of the complications that happened in the preparations of the 2005 contest.