The staging for the nine shows taking place as part of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest features 600 rigging points, 140 tons of steel ground support structure, and 1km of additional steel truss work being added to the Liverpool Arena.
The BBC has revealed some of the facts and figures behind this year’s event, including eight miles of cabling for lighting, sound, video and SFX, over 2,000 specialist lighting fixtures, 200 custom staging decks, 950 square metres of staging for the main stage, and 500 square metres of staging for the green room.
The event includes 165,000 channels of lighting control across three operators, 23,700 individual light sources, and 2500 automated state-of-the-art colour-changing robotic lights. The lighting team will use nine consoles to run 28,000 lighting cues, while 15 follow spots will be operated by 10 professionals and 5 theatre technology students from LIPA & Cheshire College.
For sound, there are 150 microphones and over 1,200 individual streams of audio.
The event is expected to use one megawatt of UPS power, 60 miles of cabling around the arena, 150 distribution boards, and 5,000 man-hours dedicated to power works.
The broadcast of the contest will be watched by over 160 million viewers worldwide, with over eight hours of live TV and 50 live feeds. Some 29 commentators will broadcast live from the arena.
Speaking on the scale of this year’s event, BBC director of unscripted Kate Phillips said: “As these statistics show this is one of the biggest events the BBC has ever produced. Coming straight after such a significant and spectacular moment in history, we aim to produce an unforgettable and utterly joyful Eurovision, on behalf of Ukraine.
“Like the Coronation, Eurovision has so many skilled and talented people from across the BBC working on it. Our brilliant team in Liverpool are making sure that all three live shows are simply must-see TV, for audiences across the UK, Europe and beyond.”
The Eurovision Song Contest 2023, starts on 9th May, with the first Semi-Final due to take place at 8pm BST.
