2008 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST VENUE?
After Serbia's clear win with the big ballad, 'Molitva', Eurovision will, for only the second time, be held in an ex-Yugoslav city. Even in the days just after the 2007 contest there were reports that the event would be held in the Beogradska Arena in Novi Beograd area of Belgrade. The 20,000 seater stadium is more than suitable, with an interview area and a press centre that can cope with 250 journalists, although they will have to provide additional capacity for accredited journalists to bring that number up to over 1000. (The stadium can handle up to 23,000, but due to the configuration of seating during the contest that number will fall to around 20,000)The story behind this large arena is a long and interesting one. It was originally constructed to hold the 1994 Basketball World Championships (when Serbia was awarded the Championships in 1989, a prerequisite was the construction of a new Stadium, hence the Beogradska Arena). Now as we all have probably already heard the venue was not opened until 2004, taking into account that it didn't open till ten years after the first event it was meant to host was finished, there must have been some trouble with it's construction, and by God, was there! Vlada Slavica's submission of plans for the venue was adopted and Block 25 in Novi Beograd was chosen for the site in 1991. Work began in a year later, in 1992, and started to go wrong shortly afterward, with the beak up of Yugoslavia, conflicts in the area and sanctions on the country lead to Serbia losing the right to hold the Basketball World Championship in 1993.
Construction of the venue continued at a slower pace until 1995, when it completely stopped due to lack of funds and material. It was not until 1998 that the building project was recommenced because Serbia was chosen to host the the 1999 World Table Tennis Competition, but once again this project was headed for meltdown. Serbia lost the right to host that competition in 1999 when NATO bombed the country. With a change of government in 2000 construction started for the third time and was finally completed in 2004. As a consolation Serbia finally got the right to host a large multi national event in 2005 when the European Basketball Championships (Eurobasket) was held in the arena. For the year starting November 2005 the Arena was once again under 'construction' with the instillation of elevators and a fire prevention system to bring the arena up to European
standards.In it's short public life it has been a stage for three previous Eurovision performers, Zdravko Čolić (Yugoslavia 1974), Toše Proeski (FYR Macedonia 2004) and Željko Joksimović (Serbia & Montenegro 2004). It has also seen concerts by many famous artists, such as Phil Collins, Andrea Bocelli, 50 cent and Busta Rhymes.
