UMK intends to move to a 10,000-seat arena for the next season. The Finnish UMK, or Uuden musiikin kilpailu, i.e. New Music Competition, has evolved into one of the best and most popular national finals in the last 3 years. This achievement is not coincidental, since the YLE channel has invested a lot of time and money to this. With an internal selection of 7 songs, for which YLE undertakes production of the final studio version as well as the video clip, highlighting all 7, and then with a live show where the public and an international jury decide on the winner, the Finnish format is a paradigm from which other countries need to take lessons, if they want to suceed in Eurovision.
YLE recognizes that UMK has now exceeded the capacity of the venue that hosted it for the previous 2 years, the Logomo Convention Center in the city of Turku. According to Ville Vilén , YLE’s head of creative content, the goal is moving UMK 2024 “to a place where we can sell four times, even six times as many tickets” .
YLE’s intention, however, is to keep the national final in Turku. So it turns out that the place that the YLE team are scouting is the big Turkuhalli stadium, also known as the Gatorade Center, which is mainly used for the hockey league. But it is also hosting big pop and rock concerts.
Turkuhalli currently has a capacity of 10,500 spectators for hockey matches and around 8,000 for concerts. The Finns are setting the bar very high for 2024 as well – and we are looking forward to the new season of UMK and its moving to a new place!
[Source: Turun Sanomat ]
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