So Loreen has done it again, Sweden won the Eurovision song contest 2023.
This means that we will be the host country for the competition next year and SVT gets to flex its muscles for the seventh time.
– You have one year to do such an incredibly large project, as Eurovision is, it’s quite a short time, says Hanna Stjärne, CEO of SVT.
On the night of Sunday, Loreen won the Eurovision song contest with the song Tatoo and made history as the second artist to win the contest twice, last with Euphoria in 2012.
Now Sweden and SVT will organize the competition for the seventh time. SVT’s CEO Hanna Stjärne says that they have already started planning for next year’s final.
– You could say we started last night. We call each other and check and there are meetings today. There are people who are in Liverpool and check how they have done and how we should think. So it starts right away, she says.
– You have a year to do such an incredibly large project, as Eurovision is, it’s quite a short time, she continues.
“Especially to arrange right now”
The last time we organized Eurovision was in 2016 after Måns Zelmerlöw’s win with Heroes. Then the competition was held in Stockholm with Petra Mede and Måns Zelmerlöw as presenters.
What SVT now has to decide on is where the competition will be held, but also the theme and direction, says Hanna Stjärne. She also says that it is special to arrange the competition at the same time as we have an ongoing war of invasion in Europe.
– The whole Eurovision started in the wake of the Second World War, it felt like you needed to do things that unite Europe. And now it is a new such serious mode so of course there are such undertones in it too.
The cost: SEK 125 million
Last year, SVT started a transformation project to save 100 million by 2025, at the same time Eurovision costs to organize. In 2016, SVT’s budget was around SEK 125 million.
– It will be a challenge. But we can spread the costs over several years and that is one of the things we are sitting and calculating now, says Hanna Stjärne.
She also says that she was more happy than worried when Loreen won.
– I was very happy and perhaps most proud.