The 2025 competition will be held in Basel. And so on a crisp day in late January, monocle traversed the city’s cobblestone streets to witness the semi-final draw and city handover – two key moments ahead of the live shows in May. These took place in the new wing of the Kunstmuseum, in front of a brightly coloured Frank Stella artwork, which serves as a fitting backdrop for an event that is known for its vibrancy. After a record-breaking yet bruising period for the competition, we sit down with Österdahl to hear about how he keeps the show on the road, why contemporary culture is always political and the importance of events that unite not divide.

Many people know about the Eurovision Song Contest but you technically work for the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). What is it?
The EBU is an international member organisation of national broadcasters with 100 members across Europe and associate members all over the world. I only work on the Eurovision Song Contest and Junior Eurovision Song Contest, but the EBU does co-production and programme exchange within the membership across all genres, including news and sport.

How long have you been a Eurovision fan?
I grew up in a home where both my parents worked in the music industry. My father competed in Eurovision in 1967 as a songwriter on the Swedish entry. He was a hit maker in the 1960s and 1970s, and then he started managing his own recording studios in Sweden and the UK. The first one was in the basement of my family house; Abba recorded there. Later, we moved to the UK and my father recorded some of the biggest stars of the time, from Marvin Gaye to Iron Maiden and later the Spice Girls and Take That. It was a very special environment; I learned the ins and outs of recording music. That has been helpful in this job.

“Eurovision is the Super Bowl on steroids”

Sweden has a special relationship with Eurovision. When the show is hosted there, the level of excitement is palpable…
That’s right. And our national competition to select our Eurovision representative, Melodifestivalen, is a massive event. It takes place over six consecutive Saturday nights with Eurovision-style production in arenas around Sweden. The whole country pretty much comes to a standstill. The final of that tour is in Stockholm with 35,000 people in attendance – more than we have for any Eurovision Song Contest. The secret to the success of Sweden in Eurovision and the Melodifestivalen format is the close collaboration between SVT [the national broadcaster] and the Swedish music industry. 

Does it feel particularly special to be hosting the competition in Switzerland this year? 
The first edition was in Lugano, so it is coming home in a way. There’s a growing fan base here and Switzerland is quite unique. It’s a country divided between three languages but united in being Swiss. 

Tell us more about your role and the complexities of hosting an event like this.
A large part of what we do is the knowledge transfer from each year: sharing how to set up what is the world’s largest music event and arguably its most complex TV production. My team and I work on this every year, so we make sure that the new host broadcaster has all the information they need because of the unique hosting mode – if you win it, you host it. We take the Monday off after the grand final and then we start again on Tuesday. There is no time to lose. I used to be a commissioning editor of entertainment and sports programming at SVT. If you’re the host broadcaster for a ski world championship, you normally know that five years in advance. With Eurovision, you win it on a Saturday night, and the host broadcaster gets a letter on Monday saying, “Congratulations, you’ve won. Now you’re expected to put all this together a year from now, and it will go out live to hundreds of millions of people”. It’s quite a daunting task. 

Do you try to avoid capital cities when selecting the host location?
The show employs more than 10,000 people, which is something that people at home perhaps do not realise. We need a lot of hotel rooms and an international airport. We also need an area near the arena with changing rooms for up to 26 delegations of 20 to 25 people. They need to have space for hair and make-up, and somewhere to organise their costumes. There needs to be a prop storage area. We also need a media centre for 1,000 members of the press and a press conference room. The logistics behind the stage are extraordinary. Cities such as Basel, Malmö and Liverpool are well equipped, but there’s the soft factor too. You want to have a city that embraces the values of the brand and wants to do something with it; that tends to be a country’s second or third city. The biggest cities have so much happening already. 

Those logistics are comparable to the biggest international music tours, right?
When we produced the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö back in 2013, the last big show before us was Lady Gaga’s tour – at that time, the world’s biggest. Lady Gaga had something like 30 semi-trailers of technology and props. We had 97. And now, we have more than 200. I love when people talk about the Super Bowl; Eurovision is the Super Bowl on steroids. 

Let’s talk about the 2024 show, which was incredibly successful in terms of viewing numbers but also controversial. 
The truth is that the Eurovision Song Contest started in 1956 as an experiment in new technology but it also had that big idea of uniting people across borders at a time when Europe had become very divided. That’s one of the main reasons why it’s become so popular. Throughout the almost 70-year history – this is the longest-running show on television – lots has happened in Europe. Unfortunately, we live in a time of conflict and division but that just makes the Song Contest even more important. We believe that we have a higher purpose: for a few nights, we can imagine the world as we would like it to be, not necessarily as it is. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning.

“For a few nights, we can imagine the world as we would like it to be, not necessarily as it is”

How do you manage the delicate question of artists expressing political views?
The arrival of social media has changed things and artists who participate in this event suddenly have their own platform. Popular culture has always been opinionated – and it must be to be contemporary. It’s an expression of identity, of what’s going on in the world and what you think about it. We understand that but we also have a set of rules that say that you’re not supposed to use the Song Contest to express political views. And that does become more challenging when we’re in a divisive time. Unfortunately, over the past few years, we’ve had the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. They both participate. We’ve had the invasion of Ukraine. And now we have the conflict in the Middle East. It’s difficult to be that neutral space when things like this are going on.

Some of those conflicts will be ongoing during this year’s show…
We don’t expect anything else but it’s important that we find a way through it. In Malmö [the 2024 edition], the latest conflict in the Middle East was relatively new and we were the first big international event to come on stage with an Israeli delegation. I think we became a little bit too passive, a little bit too silent. And we’re not making those mistakes again. We’re going to be much more proactive. We’re going to be much more communicative. We’ve introduced new codes of conduct and duty-of-care protocols. But, ultimately, it’s about mutual respect. We are supposed to be a kind, gentle event. Hate, violence and toxicity have no place in the Eurovision Song Contest. 

And there have been some new additions to the team as well.
One of the things that we realised in Malmö was that we were understaffed because the event has grown so much. We’re now a global entertainment superbrand with millions and millions of followers. We needed more support for the leadership, crisis communications and everything that has to do with managing an international brand. That’s why broadcast events leader Martin Green was recruited, which is great for us.

Lots of fans would like to see Turkey back [after it withdrew over perceived bias]. Would it be welcome? 
We would love to have Turkey back because of the fanbase there. There’s a massive fanbase in Russia too. I’d love to be able to serve those fans with Eurovision. Unfortunately, in the case of Russia, that is looking difficult. But in 20 years from now, I would love to see Turkey and Russia participating.

“Public service media is more important today than it has ever been”

At the heart of Eurovision are public service broadcasters, which each fund and organise their country’s participation. Have attitudes toward those organisations changed?
There are a lot of political voices who think that public service media is something that we no longer need but we believe that public service media is probably more important today than it has ever been. With all the new channels of communication and information, it’s harder to figure out what is going on in the world and what is true. 

What’s your favourite moment in the show? 
Right at the beginning when the clock starts and then it’s Eurovision time. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. I find the energy in the venue to be like nothing else.

Finally, what music do you enjoy listening to in your spare time?
I listen to the Eurovision songs until I’ve learned them completely. I also watch every single rehearsal. I have to learn every detail of every performance to be able to see if something goes wrong. So when Eurovision is over, I need something different. Most likely, classical music.

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