The Eurovision fan community was generally excited about the prospect of an Italian Eurovision hosting. The ability to travel somewhere warm in May with good food, good weather and easily accessible from across the continent meant this was a trip that many would look forward to. And that is without the two years of isolation that much of the community has had and the restrictions around covid-19 have limited large gatherings and travel, making the allure even stronger.
The allure to say ‘allora’ to Eurovision fans was also big from the potential hosting cities. While Turin was marked as an early favourite to host it was not a simple feat to get selected, with ultimately seventeen different bids coming in to host Eurovision. The huge appeal is easy to see, after two difficult years hosting a major event such as Eurovision would be a catalyst for most cities’ rejuvenation.
And in many a sense Turin is an ideal host city venue. As a recent Winter Olympics host city there is plenty of infrastructure around major events and in the Pala Alpitour an arena setting that doesn’t require major modifications before it can be used for the show. Eurovision should work effortlessly here.
For much of the build-up, the fan community was pinning their hopes on Turin delivering the type of Eurovision experience that one has craved through these years of waiting. Yet that Eurovision experience isn’t necessarily what we were expecting.
Trap Nights and Wine Lists
In a host city for Eurovision you witness far more than just the show itself. It is customary that the city embraces the event and there’s numerous happenings around the city for people to enjoy. This could be for example catching a glimpse of the Opening Ceremony as each act walks down a turquoise (that’s the Moroccan Oil influence again) carpet, enjoying the atmosphere at the Eurovision Village or, for those lucky enough to attend, bouncing all night long at EuroClub.
These events are taking place in some of the grandest of venues Torino has to offer. Reggia di Venaria Reale is a dreamy location for the Opening Ceremony, former royal residence and UNESCO Heritage Site on the city outskirts. The Eurovision Village is located in Parco del Valentino on prime real estate in the middle of town in picture perfect gardens alongside the River Po. Furthermore the concept of a EuroClub as an exclusive venue is no more, with 10 different locations open to all acting as EuroClubs, including some top-of-the-range coffee shops and restaurants so there’s somewhere to go whatever time of day.
In this sense we need to say that Turin is going well above and beyond what any host city needs to for when Eurovision comes to town. However the Eurovision experience may not be what everybody is after. Those EuroClubs for example won’t be hosting the usual collection of Eurovision DJs and those that have added events to our events calendar list things such as trap nights and college parties in a good example of some of the off message portions of the events being advertised.
The schedule in Turin is packed with events for Eurovision fans, but some of them miss what a Eurovision fan away from Italy might expect. Italy doesn’t have the same kind of Eurovision culture that many other countries have, the Sanremo Music Festival is by far a far bigger musical focus and often songs need to be compromised to fit this big spectacle – Eurovision by extension is a cultural afterthought here in the land of truffles and apericena.
“A Perfect Storm”
This feels like the right place for me to jump in and explain that this isn’t an article bashing Turin for not being good hosts. Instead it is a dilemma of expectations. Turin is going the extra mile in the scale of adaptations for Eurovision – it is just that the Eurovision community as a whole are craving something else. And a place to go that is for them with their music and their artists is always top of that list.
Simon Bennett, President of OGAE International, describes the situation as “a perfect storm” that has resulted in this mismatch, with numerous factors affecting the planning of Eurovision this year.
First he notes that the “host city selection process was long, meaning months of planning time were lost.” To whittle those seventeen cities down to one saw a detailed process that meant it took until October to announce Turin as host of the 66th Eurovision Song Contest. “This was compounded by the pandemic,” explains Simon, “as Italy shut down over the winter few were thinking about organising any kind of events for anybody.”
As we have seen this week with the Portuguese delegation picking up a positive covid-19 test upon arriving at the Pala Alpitour for rehearsals, the pandemic is very much still on the agenda for this Song Contest and very much in Italy as well. Not only is covid testing at the Eurovision venue a requirement but Eurovision this year involves also mask wearing indoors and a covid passport scheme was also in operation here until recently. Compared in particular to northern Europe Italy has been in a very different place for restrictions over the last few months, and with that event planning had been on hold. This is one aspect why ticket sales were later this year, for example, with uncertainty about how many people would be allowed to attend.
And it also limited the ability of OGAE International to go out on the ground to Turin to co-ordinate activities in the host city. Simon explained that organising a EuroClub “is no longer a requirement for the host city” and while in some years the host city has collaborated with OGAE International, no such co-operation has not happened this year. None of the usual DJs that OGAE co-ordinate for the host city are set to play in any of the official EuroClubs as of writing.
In times like this OGAE International, together with their local branch in the host country, would try and arrange their own venue for fans – usually known as a Fan Cafe. There is no fan cafe this year – with Simon explaining it has been difficult to convince a local club to take them in just as the winter/summer crossover takes place within Turin venues. However there is somebody on the ground in Turin who has found a space to get Eurovision fans together for a boogie with their favourite DJs.
Hiroshima, My Love
From Monday 9th May all the way through to Saturday May 14th the Hiroshama Mon Amour club, a 25 minute walk south of the Pala Alpitour, will host the venture known as EuroFansClub. This is a hastily organised venture, with news about its addition to the Turin events calendar only coming out as we approached the final few weeks before the show started in Turin.
The man behind this is Jakob Traxler. Jakob’s first experience of Eurovision was in Austria in 2015, where he was a volunteer working as a delegation host. Following his work that year he ended up working with the Italian delegation on their Eurovision adventures, except sadly for 2021 when delegation sizes were cut in Rotterdam.
Jakob has been backstage in Italy this year, working in the delegation bubble backstage at the Pala Alpitour. When he arrived to start the preparations in Turin he realised that there wasn’t a EuroClub in the traditional sense, nor any meeting spot for fans to enjoy, and sought out a solution. Now we must say at this point that Jakob has not got no experience in event planning. Having moved to Barcelona in the last few years he has been one of the people behind the Barcelona Preview Party that launched this year, proving that there was desire both from artists and the local Catalan population that another preview party on the promotional circuit could be a success.
What Jakob could do (that OGAE International are not able to do within their structures) was risk tens of thousands of Euros into booking a venue with no guarantee that fans would come. But come they will. The 1000-capacity venue will promise two Eurovision DJs each night and with individual nights selling for €15 and almost all of these have already sold out (some tickets we have been told will be sold at the door), and this with relatively little PR push. This is evidence that the demand for Eurovision content and a proper Eurovision space in the host city is bigger than ever.
Wherever We Go Next Year
Both Jakob and Simon touched on the same point for what happens once another city gets the pleasure to host this extravaganza in 2023. They, and others, are happy to do the hard graft to make events for the community possible, but the difficulty is finding the space to make sure something happens, and that is what they both would like help with for 2023 and beyond.
One task that Simon and OGAE International will be working on during this Eurovision season is data collection, collecting information about how much Eurovision fans spend in town and what activities they want to spend money on. The EuroFansClub venture proves that Eurovision fans will pay handsomely for a Eurovision experience when they arrive at the host city. As Simon explains “a host city needs to realise that the fans are in truth the real delegations to target, rather than the delegations for the show, as these fans are those that come by choice and can add value above and beyond just running the TV show.”
I note that trying to write the Turin Events Calendar page for ESC Insight has been a particular challenge. The challenge has been that the promotional press about the city is so disconnected to the Eurovision press. A press conference about events in the Eurovision Village on the Thursday attracted little (potentially none) press from the ESC bubble because they had their heads down in rehearsals. If we continue with first rehearsals being closed that is the perfect time to show off the city and make sure press get to tell that side of the story as well, to inform the thousands arriving of all there is to do. The Eurovision press and city events should be one cohesive unit, not a world where both have set up competing press centres on opposite ends of town with differing accreditation criteria.
Remember that all this does not mean that a host city needs to only cater for the Eurovision fans and for a space just for them – but it should be a part of the greater picture of events, tickets and celebration. The Eurovision Song Contest is far from shrinking in size and popularity and if it creates more global superstars the desire for people to come and witness the extravaganza will only grow. Thousands of fans will attend a well-organised extravaganza of music and cultural celebration and will spend thousands doing so. But the world of online press centres have proven that there’s no requirement to be on the ground to enjoy Eurovision. Something has to attract them there. And that something is more than just the arena – it is the community.
Turin is providing a Song Contest that delivers in creating a show and the feeling that something special is in town for these two weeks. But Turin isn’t likely to go down in Eurovision folklore (nor rock’n’roll) as an epic Eurovision hosting that lingers in the memory such as Stockholm’s Come Together did in 2016 (and yes, you should critique the author’s bias as a Stockholm resident in saying this). These two weeks are not a world of Eurovision Zumba, karaoke, comedy nights and rehearsals that the public can watch over a glass of wine outside the Royal Palace.
There were over 2,000 OGAE accreditations that people bought in 2016. If somebody came and did the same in 2023, with Eurovision on such a high, I think you could easily double that number.
But will wherever decides to host Eurovision 2023 be able to deliver? After all the biggest conundrum with the Eurovision Song Contest is that you have to reinvent the wheel every twelve months, and nobody knows today where we will be and what they can bring to the table.