Economy. Eurovision: Behind the spotlight and the glitter, millions of euros at stake

Spotlights, glitter... and millions of euros at stake. It's the big day for the Eurovision finalists , including Louane, representing France . With just hours to go before the final, bookmakers' predictions are being closely scrutinized. The ^69th edition of the European Song Contest is being held this year in Basel, Switzerland, where things have been seen in a big way, with 36 million euros allocated to the organization of the event.

In November 2024, residents of the Rhineland-Palatinate city approved the holding of the music competition in a local referendum. The Federal Democratic Union (FDPU), a small, ultra-conservative party , initiated the consultation , denouncing it as a "waste" of public money. But with the "yes" vote having won by a landslide (66.4%), the city committed significant resources to hosting the Eurovision Song Contest with great fanfare, a competition watched each year by some 160 million television viewers around the world.

Economic and tourist benefits

€22 million spent in Turin in 2022, €28 million in Liverpool in 2023, and the same in Sweden last year... This major musical competition is certainly expensive to organize, but it also brings in a lot of money for the host city, particularly the tourism and accommodation sector. Encouraged by the results of previous editions, Basel is hoping for immediate spinoffs of around 60 million Swiss francs (around 62 million euros).

In Turin in 2022, Eurovision generated up to €100 million in direct economic benefits, €23 million of which came from tourism, according to a report by the Turin Economic Chamber. And last year, Malmö, which welcomed more than 50,000 visitors from around the world during the contest, generated €38 million. According to figures released by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), organizer of Eurovision, the contest generated a net economic result of €65 million for Liverpool. Thanks to the event, more than 300,000 additional visitors flocked to the city on the west coast of England in 2023.

"Host cities have always made profits"

“Since the late 1990s, when Eurovision became more commercialized, host cities have consistently made money from tourism,” explains Dean Vuletic, author of a book on the history of Eurovision, Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest (Bloomsbury, 2018). In some cases, these benefits last well beyond the event. “Hosting Eurovision in 2012 brought attention to Baku and really put it on the global tourism map,” the historian points out.

For this ^69th edition of the competition, 6,500 tickets were sold at Basel's St. Jakobshalle for each of the nine shows, including six dress rehearsals. Last weekend, the opening parade drew nearly 100,000 people to the streets of the Swiss city. The city is also hosting a public broadcast this Saturday evening on giant screens in St. Jakob-Park, Switzerland's largest stadium, with a capacity of 36,000 spectators. The Basel tourist office estimates the number of visitors during the competition at 200,000. And the impact of this influx can be felt as far away as France, in the Haut-Rhin region. Hotels near the border, particularly in Saint-Louis and Mulhouse, neighboring towns of Basel, were quickly booked up after the announcement that the competition would be held in Switzerland.