Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest that will take place in Kyiv in May let the press take a sneak peek at the venue of the contest, the International Exhibition Center. Three weeks before the contest, the stage is 95 percent ready, according to production manager Ola Melzig.
The stage weighs 30 tons, and the platform where musicians will perform is 350 square meters. The venue’s tribunes will seat about 7,000 guests.
Meanwhile, European Broadcasting Union has published a full two-week schedule of activities for the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest held in Kyiv in May.
All the shows from May 8 to May 13 will take place at Ukraine’s International Exhibition Center on the left bank of Kyiv.
During the first eight days, each country has 20-30 minutes for rehearsal, press conferences and meet and greet sessions. The first nine countries that perform during the first semi-final on May 9 will start rehearsals as early as on April 30. That includes Sweden, Germany, Australia, Albania, Belgium, Montenegro, Finland, Azerbaijan, and Portugal.
Ukrainian representatives for Eurovision, rock band O.Torvald, will rehearse on May 5 at 3.05 p.m. and May 7 at 10 a.m., and give two press conferences on the same days at 5.20 p.m. and 11 a.m. respectively.
Most of the rehearsals start at 10 a.m. and last until around 5 p.m., while press conferences, greet-and-meet sessions and other activities are planned for around noon.
See the detailed schedule for events at eurovision.tv or here.
Despite Russia’s withdrawal from Eurovision, one can still find a scheduled timing for its contestant, Yulia Samoilova. Ukraine banned Samoilova from entering Ukraine for three years because she visited the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea illegally in June 2015.
Meanwhile, on April 19 the official ticket distributor in Ukraine Concert.ua still offers a bunch of the tickets for fan zone at the first and second semi-finals for 41 euros price. One could also find tickets for rehearsals for the semifinals, but no tickets are available for the live grand final show or its rehearsals.
Dmytro Feliksov, the director of Tickets.ua, said on April 11 that more than 30,000 Eurovision tickets were sold. In total, the organizers will issue around 70,000 tickets.
The first and second batch of grand final tickets, released on Feb. 14 and Feb. 23, sold out almost immediately, with many people waiting for hours in an online queue still ending up with nothing.
Nevertheless, those looking for tickets on the internet can still find some options from scalpers and websites – but for up to five times the price.
For example, typing “Eurovision tickets” in Russian or Ukrainian brings up an obscure website www.stubhub-ua.com.ua, which claims to have more than 100 tickets for all nine Eurovision shows, including the live grand final.
Another scalper website, tickethunt.net, offers tickets for the grand final from Hr 12,000 (418 euro). The priciest tickets in the VIP zone are sold for Hr 100,000 (3,487 euro). The same tickets were sold out for between 207 euros and 408 euros at the official website.
Ukrainian classifieds website OLX has more than a hundred postings from people selling tickets for various Eurovision shows and rehearsals, including the final show, from Hr 8,000 (around 280 euro) to Hr 16,000 (560 euros).
