The Eurovision Tour is no more.
The ambitious ten-city plan for this summer, taking over huge arenas across Europe, has been postponed one week after tickets went on sale to the public.
“Unforeseen challenges” is the vague answer from Martin Green, Director of the Eurovision Song Contest. But the timing of this announcement, immediately following a ticket release where the vast majority of seats remained unsold, means that whatever the truth, the Eurovision community will draw the conclusion that there simply wasn’t the interest for this huge-scale celebration of 70 years of the Song Contest.
We can spout a plethora of reasons why this might be the case. While demand for Eurovision tickets is high in each host city, existing as a visiting tradition in the month of May, by June and July the focus is elsewhere. Ticket cost, averaging over €100, was a factor, but the bigger issue wasn’t just the price tag, or the timing – be it as city folks depart for summer holidays or World Cup viewing parties. It was the lack of a compelling narrative to engage the Eurovision community.
I don’t criticise those for trying to create this celebration. We know that Eurovision tickets sell out at record speed. We know that throughout the Eurovision season thousands of fans attend pre-parties, and more acts are spinning off their participation into successful multi-nation tours. It’s absurd to me, aged 37 and now having followed this for 20 years, that acts singing in Slovenian would be popular enough to perform a 30 minute section of a big outdoor concert in Turku, but here’s the evidence.
Eurovision’s commercial value is on an upwards trajectory, but this Eurovision Tour project was not the right one. The biggest issue this concept had wasn’t about timing or big arenas.
It’s the authenticity.
The Eurovision Song Contest may end in what feels to many as a glorified four hour concert with voting attached, but that showcase each May is the end of a journey. Those preview parties in March and April work because they are part of the build-up. Switch the order, hold these as post-Eurovision celebrations, and you lose the sense of anticipation and the raw emotion that gives the Contest its buzz. Seeing the Song Contest is a spectacle, but can you replicate the “insider” feel and the shared passion of the community in a sanitized, touring arena format?
When I think about what the modern Eurovision community is looking for, it isn’t a four hour show through the history books. They want a narrative and a real cultural connection. Fans travel away for long weekends, four day immersion trips where food, history, and the hidden gems of the destination are as much a part of the experience as the big Saturday night spectacle. The combination of the cost and the centralized “EBU effort” of the Tour goes against the very grain of the authentic adventure fans now crave.
Moldova’s National Symphonic Orchestra performed a medley of Moldovan Eurovision classics (Photo: Ben Robertson, ESC Insight)
Martin Österdahl noted in his book All Business is Show Business that the Eurovision community often acts as the “first voice” of the organization. While the Eurovision Song Contest has over 2 million Instagram followers who will see their messages first hand, it is usually those most involved 2,000 that set the tone. You need the most dedicated fans to be the ambassadors to turn an event into a successful party.
But those ambassadors are looking for quality experiences with stories to share, a seat at a show that’s doing ten near-identikit performances doesn’t cut it for this most crucial group.
We are writing this in the midst of National Final season. For the price of a mid-range ticket to the Eurovision Tour, it’s possible to fly across the continent and experience Eurovision fun in its truest most purist form. It’s ten times more real, a hundred times more exciting and a thousand times more authentic. As National Finals increasingly are shows on a production parity to Eurovision in May, the way they throw somebody into a new culture in a way that the Contest’s nearest fans inherently understand brings easy-to-understand stories, narrative and excitement.
On my recent trip to Moldova I stumbled across fans I hadn’t seen in years in the arena. UMK in Finland sells out even its afternoon rehearsal in the Nokia Arena way before artists are selected. We are anticipating hundreds if not thousands of international fans to head over to Melodifestivalen to make their pilgrimage to Eurovision’s biggest show.
The Eurovision fan community does have an appetite for more, but we seek adventure over imitation. The splurge isn’t on getting the best seats in the audience to witness acts of years gone by, the splurge is in witnessing history, getting cultural stories, and being part of it – for real.
The cancellation of the Eurovision Tour isn’t a sign of a dying interest. Rather, it is a sign that what works in the rest of music and entertainment industry is at odds with the Song Contest community. We seek adventure and authenticity, not just to be faces in a crowd.
The EBU may wish to do some sort of celebration show again in the future. We did have a 50 year celebration and 60 year celebration after all, maybe the idea will return for 75 years. And while the scale of this show was a jump too far, there is certainly a place for some sort of anniversary celebration within the organising power of the EBU.
But if I can suggest anything, whenever that time and optimism comes, let’s make that not into a tour, but into a destination, into an unforgettable weekend of activities that will bring the community together somewhere big enough for everybody – not constrained by a host city’s capacity limits. Make the celebration not a tour, but a festival of colour and coming together and everything good about the Song Contest, culminating in the huge stadium show bringing everybody together.
That would be something of a higher purpose, of heightened excitement, that our community could be its most loyal ambassadors for, and bring everybody else along with us for the ride of their lives.