Finland may not have won Eurovision in Liverpool this year, but they came mighty close. Last year its National Final, Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu, was not only Eurovision competitive but had songs topping the charts for weeks in advance. Indeed such was its strength that the Finnish charts’ number one in the build-up wasn’t even ‘Cha Cha Cha’.
I think the on and off-stage success has given the team at Finnish broadcaster YLE a certain conviction for its next Eurovision effort. It’s like over the summer months the Finnish team have had a few gym workouts and the self-confidence to puff out their chests in an effort to fill Käärija’s bolero with real biceps of steel. At least the way UMK 2024 has been announced suggests a beefed-up swagger to the broadcaster’s Eurovision effort. Beefed-up in a way only the people’s champion ever could.
At least that was my opinion when I saw how YLE had advertised UMK across Sweden 2024’s host city of Malmö.
Käärijä towers over Malmö (photo via @catsreverywhere)
That genius bit of PR will fly right past most Swedes. But thanks to our fan community news will spread across the Baltic Sea. The native Finns will love how even for a split second they can impose a slice of Finnish culture on the neighbours next door. Remember here that Sweden held Finland for almost 700 years and the Finnish minority living in Sweden has a significant history of discrimination in the past century.
Thankfully, the modern-day bitterness between the nations focuses on the triviality of Finland’s denied victory in Liverpool due to the power of Loreen.
It all adds fuel to the fire to keep the UMK rocket on course for the stratosphere. 2.1 million watched Käärijä’s victory last year (the only other event on Finnish TV getting more viewers was Finland’s victory in the World Ice Hockey Championships) and the scale of interest meant that we have to size up for 2024.
2023 IIHF World Championship Latvia vs USA, Tampere (Photo: Wikimedia/Gustamons)
UMK is now jumping from a capacity of a couple of thousand in the hall in Turku last year to the 15,000 Eurovision-ready Nokia Arena of Tampere, the home of that Ice Hockey World Championship triumph. And the plan is that the 2-hour show will, just like last year, feature pre-show events from 18:00 and a disco until 03:00, which arguably makes UMK the Eurovision party of the season (tickets are released on October 5th, think fast is my advice if you fancy a trip).
Anssi Autio, UMK’s Executive Producer, was still in charge back in 2014, when UMK was the first foreign National Final I attended. He has seen UMK through the bad times and has stuck it out and changed the concept numerous times to find a formula that works.
Anssi now claims that UMK is “top-tier entertainment” and an “unparalleled hit factory” for Finnish music and that position, coupled with “Eurovision’s popularity” (and a city in Tampere that got the Eurovision bug after Käärijä’s close call) means the big arena experience in Finland is back and bigger than ever.
And we already have the seven competing songs. Okay,, we don’t have them, but they have been selected from the 419 submitted to the broadcaster with a “historically high” standard. Jury chairperson Tapio Hakanen promises the “all-time best group of entries” with 90s dance, indie and club bangers guaranteed in the seven competing songs.
There’s also the “thunderous rock anthem by a world-touring band” promised which, knowing the Finnish public, they will likely end up sending to Malmö.
Yes, this is the Finnish broadcaster’s propaganda trying to excite us, before any evidence to listen to and judge for ourselves yet. But much like their music video craftsmanship, the attention-to-detail staging, the genre-bending variety of their National Final and most importantly their ability to create hit after hit, we can now add their PR game to the list of things all broadcasters should be watching Finland for and learning from.
No doubt the Swedes in Malmö will be closeted away watching some schlager starlet canter to victory in Melfest heat 2 that weekend. But those posters weren’t for the Swedes, they were to buzz our community that Finland was daring to strut at Sweden’s level. Given the choice of Melfest’s 2nd heat or UMK on February 10th I know where I want to be in the February cold next year.
…the place promising a spectacle of more crazy, more party.