THE NETHERLANDS – Many were surprised when Amsterdam was not chosen as the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest host city although most of us already speculated that Rotterdam or Maastricht would have won anyway. Amsterdam couldn’t afford the bid as local press claims.
The chosen venue for Amsterdam would have cause major loss to the venue owners as they would cancel many international concerts which bring lots of money to the Dome and the city as it would have been booked for at least 8 weeks. As the Johan Cruijf Arena was also occupied by football club AFC Ajax for Spring 2020, Amsterdam was left with no venue.
There was also an idea for a tent but the weather conditions were a big obstacle especially if a storm occurred. Amsterdam is not the first city to explore a tent as a Eurovision venue. Both Vienna and Odessa considered tents for Eurovision 2015 and 2017 respectively. In 2014, Eurovision host city Copenhagen had a special tent complex for both the press centre as well as the dressing rooms.
With Rotterdam and Maastricht city councils allocating more than 15 million Euros in their bids for hosting the event, Amsterdam allocated only 5 million Euros. The city bid team wanted to rename the contest into Eurovision Songfestival instead of Song Contest. That reminded us the 1996 rename of the contest in Oslo as Eurovision Grand Prix.
