Ok, everyone here is saying it - Israel is by far the worst host possibly in the history of Eurovision. Definitely the worst in recent memory.
Lets start with a small item that doesn't matter much, but is a great indicator. At every other Eurovision, when its time to start the voting, there's a countdown on the screen and the entire audience screams out "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Europe - Start Voting Now." The audience is charged up and all of the viewing audience gets charged from the audience enthusiasm. But Tuesday night? One of the hosts looked at the camera and quietly said "start voting." A simple little thing so easy to get right - and they did it wrong.
Moving on to the big things. The Euro Club opens very late (11:00 pm) and even at that late time, for the first hour they kept saying the main part would be open "in 10 minutes." But no big loss, because the place was dead. Every previous year I was at it opened much earlier than that and had a large number of the acts in there performing. What we had in Tel Aviv at the Wiwi Jam last night (which was awesome, but not at the Euro Club) was what the Euro Club was every night.
In addition to the Euro Club, they had events each night at a dance venue called the Theater. The split between the two significantly diluted things at each where you had maybe half a good event at each. The only logic for this was that Israel wanted to maximize profit at the expense of providing a good experience.
Next is the Euro Village. Definitely the best ever in terms of food choices. Absolutely amazing. For dinner. Not so much for lunch as it didn't open until 5:00 pm. What, the fans and tourists don't eat lunch? The hours definitely showed no thought of the fans and tourists. And aside from food, not much going on in the village.
And then there's the ticket prices. They had some of the highest prices ever. I guess to make up for all the tickets they gave away to the politically connected. And small number of tickets allocated to the fan clubs. And the end result? The high ticket prices and hotel prices (the hotels all jacked up prices) meant people stayed away. And so, with one of the smallest venues in recent memory - they have empty seats left. Talk about screwing it up, in their effort to maximize profit they scared everyone away.
Even worse, they are totally screwing up the staging for the acts. Artists have put everything into these performances and then Israel destroys them.
And we'll end it with the hosts for the show. These four were so bad they make Azerbaijan's hosts look good. They were so awkward delivering their lines and interacting with each other it was obvious they had never practiced. And for the song to get us all ready to go? It wasn't even a Eurovision song. Really - they couldn't find one Eurovision song to play to get the audience going?
If Israel hosts again, I won't be returning. Beautiful country, wonderful people, horrible hosting.
Agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.
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