Eurovision 2019: EBU today in Israel – Another city to the candidates for hosting the event
EBU will visit for the first time today Israel, where the EBU officers will have talks with the fledgling country’s public broadcaster (IPBC), for the next event. In addition, the mayor of Petah Tikva, a city near Tel Aviv, announced that it is interested in hosting Eurovision 2019.
Their first meeting will be today with people of IPBC, to discuss the next Eurovision, that after Netta’s victory,will be held next May in Israel.
The executive supervisor of the contest, Jon Ola Sand, said about this challenge:
“Clearly, Eurovision in Israel is a much bigger challenge than Eurovision in Sweden. Yet, people in Israel’s public broadcaster are at the forefront of their skills and have a high sense of contest.”
Following the sudden closure of the country’s previous public broadcaster, IPBC has less than a year of life, and perhaps that is the big problem that Jon Ola Sand and EBU will have to deal with.
Meanwhile, despite the Eurofans’ great desire, the next Eurovision to be held in Tel Aviv, the mayor of the city from the first moment of Netta’s victory, said his city would not be nominated to take over the event. Moreover, Netta and her country’s prime minister have stated that Jerusalem will be the city that will host the competition this year.
But the mayor of another city does not seem to be hurt. In particular, Mayor of Tikva,Itzik Braverman said yesterday to press representatives that his city will claim Eurovision 2019. Petah Tikva is 10 km from Tel Aviv and is the fifth largest city in the country with 220,000 inhabitants. The big problem for the city is that it does not have a large closed arena. The Mayor, however, states that this is not a problem, because if the Azeris managed to build a new arena in 6 months, then Israel can.
It has already begun an online campaign to promote the candidacy of Petah Tikva, which, according to the mayor of the city, is the answer to the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv dipole. All of this, of course, while the voices from abroad are calling for the cancelation of conducting in Israel or, if not, its boycott.