Contact us

Future of the Eurovision Family of Events

EDC0708

Well-known member
Joined
January 12, 2014
Posts
3,622
The main contest is clearly going to survive for many decades to come, but what is the future for the other events in the "Eurovision Family of Events". In the late noughties the EBU seemed keen on creating a number of spin off events to ESC, but these have been rapidly disappearing:
Eurovision Dance Contest - not held since 2008
Eurovision Magic Circus Show - not held since 2012
Eurovision Young Dancers - Not held since 2017

Many planned events, including the Eurovision Talent Contest 2009, never took place at all.

Of the ones currently running:
Junior Eurovision Song Contest grows up this year, turning 18 years old! I think Junior Eurovision has at least another 3-5 years left in it, but the slow withdrawal of countries in recent years, plus declining ratings in some nations, may well see it end after that, the original child audience from when the contest started are all now adults, so the contest needs to attract new fans more regularly than the other events.
Eurovision Young Musicians has been running for a long time, but the planned 2020 event in Croatia was postponed at the same time as ESC 2020, and never rescheduled, so this may be coming to an end
Eurovision Choir - similar to EDC, this may only last two editions, ratings seemed very low compared to JESC and EDC, there is currently no news on the third event, no signed up countries, and no participants, so maybe this has quietly ended with no announcement.

Personally, the EBU may need to focus on rebranding JESC in the coming years post-pandemic, perhaps removing the pressure on the young participants, since this seems to be the issue stopping a few countries taking part, and perhaps featuring slightly older performers, maybe upping the age range to about 13-19 years old, so participants are more able to deal with the pressure. As a fan of the Eurovision Dance Contest, obviously I would love it if the EBU unexpectedly revisited it, it was one of the highest rated Eurovision spin-off events, gaining around 23 million viewers for the first edition, so potentially a rebrand of this could create a format more countries want to participate in, potentially something small like allowing more styles of dance than just ballroom and latin could be enough to bring countries back, the cancelled 2009 event was having to compete with JESC, EYD and ETC for countries, potentially causing the cancellation of all but JESC that year.

What do you see as the future of the Eurovision Family Events, will these disappear as the EBU focuses on the main show (and possibly the American Song Contest if it takes off), or is there still a space for these after the pandemic?
 

tomos2019

Member
Joined
February 6, 2019
Posts
870
Location
West Cornwall
Personally I'd rather see more events actually in different parts of the world than just variations on the same thing, sorry. While on the topic I wouldn't mind something like an acting contest or a TV show contest though lol
 

Chalphon

Well-known member
Joined
February 28, 2021
Posts
2,039
Location
Stockholm
I feel like there could be events like the ones you describe without putting the ESC label on them. I don't care at all about JESC or ASC and I don't mind them gone.
 
Top Bottom