Liverpool's Eurovision journey officially ends
The Eurovision Song Contest is being handed over to the next hosts today
Liverpool's Eurovision journey is officially at an end.
Liverpool City Council leader Liam Robinson, Councillor Harry Doyle and Mayor Steve Rotheram are in Sweden to officially handover the Eurovision baton to the next hosts Malmo.
Hundreds of thousands of people came to Liverpool for the extravaganza, which boosted the local economy by a massive £55million!
A report published last week found Liverpool, which hosted on behalf of Ukraine, has revolutionised the hosting of the contest and 'redefined the event in a way that can only inspire future hosts'.
Liam Robinson said:
"(We're) not just talking them through the template of Eurovision, we're treating it as a really great opportunity to enhance our trading links with Malmo and Sweden - so we'll be meeting companies that have bases in both cities - but also some of the research similarities that we've got in things like health and life sciences, our universities, and different parts of the economy as well.
"So we're looking at this as a huge opportunity, not just to say how we hosted a great Eurovision, but how we can use it as part of our economic success into the future as well.
"We have set the bar for the Eurovision Song Contest and we're really looking forward to sharing our learning with Malmo and any other city that follows us and hopefully we'll get the chance, if Britain is successful, to host it again."
Steve Rotheram said:
"It's a real packed programme that we've got over there and obviously we want to celebrate what we did for Eurovision last year here in Liverpool, but it's more about what are the legacy issues... what can we build from those relationships?
"Malmo are really interested in talking to us about things like for instance gaming, there's a big gaming industry over there, so we want this to be a trade delegation as well of course as a cultural exchange."