Eurovision Song Contest 2007

The Hartwall Areena - Venue for the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest

About the Contest

Finnish broadcaster YLE was quick to accept the offer of hosting the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, shortly after Lordi won the 51st contest in Athens.

The 2007 contests will be on 10 and 12 May 2007.

The broadcaster immediately issued a call for all suitable venues across the country to apply to stage the event. After many applications were considered, it came down to Helsinki and Turku. The Finnish capital won and the Hartwall Arena was named as the venue at the end of June 2006.

Tickets quickly sold out for the event. YLE is maintaining a webpage with information about the contest and one of the most popular sites in Finland also has information in English at:

http://www.viisukuppila.fi/

Participating Broadcasters

The top ten scoring countries from 2006 have already won places in the 2007 final. Germany, France, Spain and the UK are also automatically given places in the final as their broadcasters contribute the largest amount of money towards staging this show and other EBU activities.

On 12 March 2007, there will be a draw to determine the running order of both the final and semi-final. At that time, the final will be drawn to include ten open spaces for qualifying songs from the Thursday evening show. We will update this running order after the draw has been made.

About the Venue

After Lordi won the 2006 contest, YLE immediately issued a call for all suitable venues across the country to apply to stage the event. Many applications were considered, it came down to Helsinki and Turku. The Finnish capital won and the Hartwall Arena was named as the venue at the end of June 2006.

The two nearest hotels to the venue are the Holiday Inn Helsinki and Sokos Hotel Pasila. The area is though just ten minutes away from the city centre by regular train, so there is no need to worry if you book a hotel in a more attractive part of the city.

Ticket Sales

The annual bodge job of ticketing for the Eurovision Song Contest saw fans turned away despite tickets being available. Others were told the only way they'd get in would be by shelling out on a package 'deal'.

Despite having months to prepare and almost ten years of experience ticketing large-scale events, the EBU remains stubbornly opposed to centrally coordinating the ticket sales or appointing a ticketing partner. Each year a new organisation gets the job and any knowledge gained seems to be instantly lost as the same mistakes are made year in, year out.

This year, the organisers appear to have spectacularly misjudged the market. After seeing low demand for rehearsal ticket, it was decided to tack these onto tickets for the final and semi-final. YLE presented fans with 'packages'. Even the most talented spin-doctors had problems convincing people that to get the best tickets, they needed to shell out for unwanted rehearsal tickets. An initial package offered to fans was trimmed down dramatically after protests.

These packages became the source of controversy, after a number of fans were told that individual tickets were sold out and the only alternative was to take one of the package deals. Despite this, on the same day, a few lucky fans calling the ticket office found they could still buy one-off tickets without having to commit to paying for unwanted rehearsal tickets at the same time.

Esctoday.com asked a manager of the company behind ticketing to explain and were fobbed off with the limp and unconvincing explanation that, "the situation changes all the time." They then went on to claim that the issue was caused when fans from overseas decided to move from individual tickets to packages, suggesting that everyone in two blocks simultaneously changed their minds.

Black market trade in the tickets quickly started. Within hours, tickets were on sale at Finnish auction sites for twice their face value.

Despite this, tickets will most likely still be available right up to the contest and fans are encouraged to keep checking. As a rule, after the semi-final, many delegations release their tickets and they go back on sale as they sulk back to their home countries, humiliated by the voting.

Ticket sales this year are handled (sic) by Ticket Services Finland.
This page to be taken from Doteurovision.com