Sweden is worried. This Saturday may win Eurovision again. But you don’t feel like organizing the festival for another year. The last time he did, only 12 months ago in Malmö, he lost 100 million Swedish crowns (more than 9 million euros). Anton Glanzelius, in charge of the programming of the Swedish public broadcaster SVT in the press of his country. If you have to be host again, it announces as many budget cuts that defines the possible edition as austere. “There may be a smaller scenario and a more discreet lighting team, but still the costs will be huge,” he explained to the newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
The problem is that, for once, the country of the always solvent and exquisite musical proposals have passed to the festival’s mamarracho side. And that liked that. The comic-musical trio Kaj triumphs these days with his parodic Bara Bastu Bara, that honors the Nordic tradition of the sauna and dominates official bets. They are the same predictions that predict Melody a position in the middle of the table. Its position in the bets fluctuates once the semifinals between the 13 and 15. That divathe song and the singer. Austria, France and even the Netherlands can surprise, while the possibilities of the Israeli candidacy have cooled slightly in the last hours.
It may be Sweden to be a superpower in this Eurovision, to gain it so often and to have a selection process, the melodifestiven, which is an even larger social phenomenon than the Italian San Remo Festival, the mirror in which the European contest was looked at Basel, headquarters of this edition. For the Swiss city, it has been an opportunity that does not plan to miss.
Letizia Elia, head of Basel Tourismus, tells this newspaper on Thursday since her office in the city center waiting between 300,000 and 500,000 visitors only during this week. With a habitual population, of 173,000 inhabitants, the festive atmosphere is more evident than in a much more populated place such as Malmö, whose Eurovisive activities were decentralized even extending to neighboring Danish capital, Copenhagen. And that faced much more serious tensions among the protesters contrary to the presence of Israel at the festival.
Hotel occupation in Basiela is reaching levels of 95% and the expected economic impact is about 60 million Swiss francs (64 million euros), twice the invested, says Elia.
“People know Basiela for culture, thanks to Art Basel and several of our museums (highly recommended they are dedicated to the writer and painter Jean Tinguely and the Beyeler Foundation). Or for Christmas markets. This is our opportunity to show us differently, “confesses the head of this tourism office.
Therefore, everything in the streets of the Swiss city is musical these days. Not only Eurovisive. Several squares and even a football stadium house giant screens so that people follow the semifinals and the final of the contest for free. The Steinenvortadt commercial and pedestrian has become Eurovision Street. The nearby Barfüsserpatz has official positions that sell official Eurovision products. The Eurovillage houses thousands of people every day, generating lines along several apples. There are karaoke screens in the shop windows in the Kneipe (the taverns in the German speaking world) and even in some trams that run through its main streets.
“In our proposal to house Eurovision we insist that we wanted to celebrate music in general. At all levels. This May, public schools have music as the main subject,” he says. Despite the size of the city, it benefited from being close to large metropolis not only of Switzerland, but also of Germany and France. Its geographical situation cannot be more European.
Long -term effect
Easyjet, official Eurovision 2025 airline, connects Basiela directly or indirectly with more than twenty Spanish destinations. The ship of Madrid-Basilea last Tuesday, in which journalists, artists of Benidorm Fest invited to act in parallel and Eurofans activities, looked like a group excursion more than one more of the regular flights of the airport. “On the occasion of the contest, the airline has increased by 13 % the connections between Basel and Spain during the week of the event, responding to the high demand of travelers,” a company spokesman for travelers tells this newspaper.
Booking.com, another official sponsors of this edition, also knows how fruitful its symbiosis with the festival. The company has detected a 53% increase in accommodation searches from Spain to Basel in this first semester of 2025, when national searches on the occasion of the final have multiplied by 13, according to those responsible.
A few days after the Eurovision 2025 Festival final, Booking.com has registered a 220% increase in flight searches from Spanish airports to Basel to visit the Swiss city this week. They are search data on the platform between May 5 and 9. The company has also detected that international accommodation searches in the host city of the contest have experienced a notable increase, with 119 % more interest compared to the same period of the previous year.
Actually, they comment from Basel Tourismus, the effect they are looking for with Eurovision 2025 “is one more in the long term: that thousands of people take us into account to visit us at other times of their life,” he yearns for his responsible, Letizia Elia.
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