Basel voters will decide Sunday on whether to spend tens of millions of dollars to host the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, with opponents decrying a "waste" of public funds for a "blasphemous" music performance.
If inhabitants in the northern Swiss region of Basel-Stadt block the nearly $40 million-credit needed to put on the annual TV extravaganza, "Eurovision will need to be scaled way back", Edi Estermann, head of communications for the 2025 edition, told AFP.
The event, currently planned to last around 10 days with numerous public happenings around Basel, "would be reduced to a big TV show" on a single evening, he said.
"And that would of course create far lower value for the city and for all of Switzerland."
Swiss singer Nemo's 2024 Eurovision victory in Malmo, Sweden gave Switzerland the right to host next year's event, with a huge global audience guaranteed.
Basel in August beat other Swiss cities to secure the event, but the financial demands raised objections.
Swiss voters are used to having a direct say on how taxes are spent, and some bristled at the potential costs and hassle of the Eurovision circus.
Fear of the occult
Last month, the small, ultra-conservative, Christian fundamentalist Federal Democratic Union of Switzerland (EDU) submitted the signatures needed to push through a referendum on whether to grant the 34.96 million Swiss francs ($39.5 million) approved by regional authorities for the show.
"The first argument is financial," Philippe Karoubi, an EDU board member, told AFP. "This is a totally disproportionate public expenditure, a true waste."
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) media alliance, which owns Eurovision, finances the contest, but deems that given the financial benefits host cities typically reap, they should help to cover security costs especially.
Based on recent contests in Malmo, Sweden, and Liverpool, Britain, Basel hopes to make about 60 million Swiss francs from the event, in particular in tourism and hospitality.
EBU said that Malmo has since the contest in May seen "a large number of international visitors coming to the city, spending generously while there".
The problem, Karoubi said, was that public funds would be used, while the financial benefits would mainly be pocketed by private actors, like hotels.
Besides the financial argument, he said EDU opposed financing a show that it believes has become "a vector of ideological provocations, which are clearly contrary to Western Judeo-Christian values".
He slammed "blasphemic performances", some verging on "the occult", decrying that this year's performance by Irish artist Bambie Thug as "almost a public form of Black Mass".
Dwindling options
The competition, he charged, had also become "an international platform that has been completely instrumentalised to promote ideologies" promoting things like "wokism" and trans rights.
EDU has also decried how the contest, which is supposed to be neutral, increasingly finds itself invaded by debate over international conflicts like the Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
The party, which states on its website that it "stands unconditionally alongside the state of Israel as the fulfilment of biblical prophecies", has also expressed shock at the "true harassment" Israeli contender Eden Golan suffered in Malmo.
Karoubi slammed the "anti-Israel and anti-Semitic demonstrations", insisting the hostility shown was "unacceptable and incompatible with the 'United by Music' spirit of the competition".
While some of EDU's warnings may appear fringe, its financial arguments could gain traction among Swiss voters who typically like to keep a tight hold on the purse strings.
But if the credit is rejected, there is little room left to maneuvre in time for the May 17, 2025 finale.
It could be moved to another Swiss city, Estermann said.
But that "would have to be carefully considered", he said.
"Preparations are already well advanced in Basel."
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