How to apply MSP principles to an international event? Eurovision Song Contest’s Case

Eurovision Song Contest, the international song competition among the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union, has reached its 64th edition. The contest is the most important and long-lived music festival in the world: every year singers from all Europe try to amaze the audience with music and funny performances.

But how to manage an event so complex? Thanks to a set of principles such as those of Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®)!

Eurovision Song Contest as a Programme

Eurovision Song Contest is a huge event that is being screened live to nearly 200 million people across the world. It needs an intensive and structural plan of work. In other words, it’s a project: more precisely, it’s a programme!
41 countries compete and all of them have their own goals to achieve. In addition, there are also projects around hosting the event in Israel. All these factors make the Eurovision Song Contest a really complex program.

Or at least this is the opinion of John Edmonds, PPM Portfolio Development Manager that published a very interesting article on the topic (The Eurovision Song Contest – How to make it work using MSP – AXELOS). Edmonds tries to see MSP principles at work in such a high-profile event as the Eurovision Song Contest.

Applying MSP principles on Eurovision Song Contest

Edmonds writes that the use of three principles of MSP would have been able to contribute to the success of the Eurovision Song Contest.
The MSP principles taken into consideration are: Learning from Experience, Envisioning and Communicating, Designing and delivering a coherent capability. Let’s see one by one.

MSP’s principle: Learning from Experience
Eurovision 2019 will be the 64th time the event has taken place and Israel has hosted the event twice before. So there are many years of lessons available to the team: it is crucial that the organizers have the ability to apply those lessons in an appropriate way.

MSP’s principle: Envisioning and Communicating
Engagement is essential for Entertainment Business. Two ways in which we can encourage engagement on a large scale are:
. Be pragmatic: do not enforce a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
. Work in an engaging way that invites participation from as many stakeholders as possible.

MSP’s principle: Designing and delivering a coherent capability
Coherency and a well-designed show are essential for the overall vision of the event. For this reason, the main stage at Eurovision 2019 is being designed by the same team from the five previous years.

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Source: The Eurovision Song Contest – How to make it work using MSP by John Edmonds – AXELOS PPM Portfolio Development Manager