The year 2020 may be the first and last time that Junior Eurovision costs some countries more money than the adult version. At least that’s what we’ve learned from the budget and accounts of RTVE, the Spanish broadcaster.

On Tuesday fact-checking website Newtral published the costs of RTVE’s participation in Eurovision 2020, Europe Shine a Light and the remote Junior Eurovision Song Contest.

Spain at Junior Eurovision 2020: 46,000 euros

The later, which saw Soleá move ‘Palante‘ to third place, had a budget of 46,713.18 euros. That’s almost 60,000 euro less than in 2019, when Melani García and the whole delegation flew to Poland.

The physical setting of Soleá’s performance cost 13,700 euros, while the staging was worth 1,500 euros. That’s slightly less than what RTVE had planned on spending. The broadcaster was looking to spend up to 16,700 euros originally.

A curiosity about the 2020 edition was that the broadcasting rights were free, while in 2019 RTVE had to pay more than 30,000 euros.

Eurovision 2020: 34,000 euros

RTVE’s budget department may be home to some of the few people in the world who were happy that Eurovision was cancelled. In fact, while the broadcaster had planned to spend almost 700,000 euros in the 2020 edition, it only spent a little more than 34,000 in the end.

The biggest part of the planned spend were the broadcasting rights, which would have been almost 300,000 euros.

Technical resources and personnel would have accounted for another 140,000; another 73,000 were for “artistic resources” and 48,700 were for dresses and props. None of this was as expensive as Edurne’s performance.

However, the contest was cancelled in March and those expenses were never made.

The most expensive chapter of RTVE’s real budget in 2020 was for accommodation — almost 20,300 euros. Technical resources and personnel accounted for another 11,500 euros.

Europe Shine a Light: 30,000 euros

For May 16, when the Eurovision final should have taken place, the EBU put together Europe Shine a Light, a tribute to the contest that never happened. For RTVE, that meant an extra 30,000 euros.

Again, technical resources and personnel were a big part of that budget, accounting for more than 23,000 euros. 2,000 more euros were spent on graphics and 2,550 on artistic resources.

To sum it up: RTVE spent 10 times less than what it had planned on Eurovision 2020. While it had an expected cost of 691,000 euros, it ended up around 65,000.

What do you make of this? Is it too much or too little money? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!

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Purple Mask
Purple Mask
3 years ago

Money, money, money, must be funny… oh, you know the rest

carlos
carlos
3 years ago

Hang on…. a short video clip for shine a light cost €30,000????

James
James
3 years ago
Reply to  carlos

Costs of production tends to be very high, even if you’re producing a 2-hour-special. Just saw how 30k euros costs in USD and it looks like it brelt makes up a third of how much an hour-long episode of a US TV drama costs.

eurofan
eurofan
3 years ago
Reply to  carlos

And considering some just did it in their bedrooms and backyards, I was screaming at how much that was

Tom
Tom
3 years ago
Reply to  carlos

Thats why Hooverphonic left the chat

Me!
Me!
3 years ago

I think it would be good for the contests if EBU could do a research on the ammount of money that goes to ESC and JESC every year and how it could be slimmed down, the host broadcaster itself has to always spend a huge ammount every year as well as the patricipating countries

Hellooooo
Hellooooo
3 years ago
Reply to  Me!

Definitely

James
James
3 years ago

If it’s only a fraction of the budget approved to RTVE that was spent for their respective participations in ESC and JESC, then it shouldn’t be an issue. As a public broadcaster, I assume they are required by law to publicly disclose their expenditures to tax-paying Spaniards.

Hellooooo
Hellooooo
3 years ago
Reply to  James

Yes they are. Sometimes they try to hide them from us and it is necessary to go to a tribunal (I think it was the case in one national final)