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The finals of the Euro Voice 2010 competition for young performers were held more than a month ago on September 23 and 24 in Athens. The fuss about the music event has gone but not the memories of it. The competition has left a bitter taste of unpleasant surprises ‘served’ literally at the last moment. Chaos, mess and lack of organization are the words to describe it. Euro Voice 2010 will remain in history as the show in which Greek and world music stars refused to perform. Some of them directly addressed the audience, some of them did not. Let me just recall that the Greek megastar Sakis Rouvas withdrew his participation as a host of the competition a day before its start. His partner, not jus anybody but Pamela Anderson herself, found out that she actually came to Greece to become the captain of a sinking ship and take the host of the show on her shoulders ... quite ridiculous. At a press conference a day before the start of the competition she asked with a smile and full of expectation: "And where is Sakis?” There was silly silence and a late answer that ... "Sakis will not participate.” Wasn’t it right to inform the beautiful blonde who came all the way from America earlier about the change? Apparently not. The organizers deemed it unnecessary. Fortunately, Pamela proved to understand and hosted the show to the end not allowing the stunning surprises pouring on stage like rain to ruin her mood.

Something we could not tell about Anastacia. The singer did not stand any nonsense and instead of singing she stood before the audience with a white sheet of paper in her hand to inform it about some ‘details’ that remained a secret... Puffs of smoke in her private premises hurt her voice and she simply left the show. What would happen if Enrique Iglesias had refused to sing at Euro Voice 2010? The ship should have really sunk...

Television viewers did not witness the culmination of some unpleasant moments thanks to commercials. The audience in the Athinon Arena hall, however, witnessed the true helplessness and lack of organization of the show. For if the TV channels found salvation in commercials, the situation in the hall was far more difficult to control. Numerous break-downs, especially during the first night, could be filled with nothing else except with advertising spots of the performers. But repeated continuously they bored the people and they left the hall quickly. Only squabbles about the high price paid for the tickets filled the corridors of Athinon Arena…
 
But these were outside the scenes. And what happened behind the scenes of the show? Recently, the representative of Norway, Bjorn Lislegaard contacted GRreporter to tell about all that remained hidden from the viewers eyes and that would have never be known if he hadn’t risen his voice. Bjorn had bad luck at the beginning of his song – he was cut and off the stage of Euro Voice 2010 due to organizational error. Something that would upset any performer. But not the organizers in Athens. He was on stage again later and this time he was given the chance to sing his song to the end ... Here's what the performer of Up to the Hill told us:

We arrived at the airport very excited. It turned out, however, that there wasn’t a driver hired to drive us to the place. This was our first disappointment. The next would not be much late. We arrived at the Arena Athinon, but nobody even greeted us. The place was full of people who worked for the competition but nobody knew who we are. We had to ask what to do and when to do it. Things were going in three-hour delay. There were many similar incidents.

There were delays in the program every day. The longest one was 12 hours. The explanation was that the show was new. The real reason was that the people were not professionals. A 20-year-old girl from Ukraine was in charge of the organization. The other staff were also Ukrainians and Greeks at the age of 20, with no experience. Overall, the event had no schedule. Nobody was informed about delays. When there were delays no one offered us anything to eat or drink. Organizers were smoking permanently inside.  

I wondered why Ukrainians were in charge of this competition. Because they are good at what they do? No. Because it was their idea?... The director was not Greek. He was Ukrainian who did not look good. He was anonymous. Personally, I do not think these people wished the music well.

Here follows the next mystery and scandal. The vote. Everyone who was involved in the competition knew who would be the winner still in the first day. This should be transparent voting. But how could one leave number 2 behind with 500%? Moreover, the organizers had to add virtual votes for each the last day since the vote was  much worse in numbers and on the web portal. In fact, there were not many votes on the portal and number 2 had only a few hundred votes the day before the end of the competition.  

We all met in the waiting room after the last performance. One of the organizers said: "Thank you for being here, goodbye. Then we were left to sort ourselves as we can. Who were we for them? We had only two small rehearsals. At least 1 week intensive rehearsals are required for a TV show like this.

Discrimination. Not all were treated like us. They treated some a little better and others like true artists. Let's divide the participants into 3 groups:

In the first group were the most ‘valuable’ countries – Cyprus, Greece, Ukraine, Russia and some others. They never waited when there were delays. The organizers paid for the stay of these countries’ representatives and looked after them.