Any scousers around? I have Eurovision final tickets! Where can I stay?

[NotFromAroundThere]

By some crazy miracle, I'm going to the Eurovision final in May!!!

There doesn't seem to be any reasonably-priced hotels/ Air Bnb left though? Are there any websites I might be missing?

Which cities/ towns are nearby and easy enough to get to at night?

Ta very much!

What do you need? Bedrooms etc? Try wirral on the liverpool train lane.

Good luck with that.. People booked out all the hotels for all the weeks of May back when Liverpool was announced

I will literally take anything that's reasonably priced! Dorm rooms, sofa, anything!

We are two adults, one male, one female.

Wirral and Manchester (although i find Manchester hotels very expensive) both have direct train lines into city centre, as does Warrington.

My friend has a double room that she air bnbs about 15 min bus/train ride into the centre. Want me to ask her. She usually charges £75 a night. I presume she might ask for more if its in demand. How many nights is it for. She lives there alone in a 3 bed house. But only rents the double x

Good luck with that one, OP. There are train works scheduled on Avanti Westcoast and Northern for that weekend (!) so check travel options carefully before booking anything or you may end up factoring in a very pricey cab.

Prices have obviously rocketed, but if you aren’t too fussy about standards then you might find something at the cheaper end in Southport where there are still quite a few independent B&Bs - you may find a nice one (just avoid Pontins like the plague 😉).

Good luck with that.. People booked out all the hotels for all the weeks of May back when Liverpool was announced

Yeah, I wondered how that went. People paying reportedly gargantuan prices to book accommodation for an event that they knew they were very, very likely not to be able to get tickets for anyway.

Were they all flexible/refundable bookings? I can't imagine somebody seeking to gouge £8K a night out of people for their Air BnB would have willingly made it refundable and easy to cancel?!

Obviously I hate you and hope you accidentally spill vinegar in a fresh paper cut in the webbing between your fingers.

However because I'm a nice person, my advice would be that you should haunt the websites of Booking.com/ Premier Inn etc constantly for the next few days because a lot of people will have pre-booked up cancellable accommodation near the arena on the off chance and then not got tickets, or got them for the semi-finals etc, so if you get ready to pounce there should be some cancellations available.

Sorry sorry sorry, my mistake. I believe it is London Northwestern - that makes life a bit easier for you!

Omg 8k a night, I need to put mine up! Surely not. Although mine is probably worth nearer to £8 ha. Yeah there have got to be cancellations Surely.

You could try Widnes or Runcorn. There are buses and trains from Liverpool to both, but maybe not much after 11pm (maybe 11.30ish for train). It's not too far, so could do taxi or Uber, but prices may well be hiked up and taxis could be hard to get.

Ooh you lucky thing! Well jealous!

On booking.com there's accommodation in Aughton for less than £200 for the night, 30 mins on the train into Liverpool. It looks like it's a 5 min cab ride to Augton Park train station, but whether you'd struggle with a cab at that time?

Or Chester is about an hour on the train, similar by car. That line runs along the Wirral through Hooton, Bromborough, Birkenhead and under the Mersey to Liverpool. Again, you would need to check times for getting back.

We desperately wanted tickets but knew we'd struggle to get home (just over the water to Wirral) afterwards. Good luck OP.

I have accomodation but no tickets, queued for an hour for the family show 😞

How much of a party animal are you, OP? You might be best off staying a little further afield and getting the first train back in the morning. Think the first trains from Liverpool Central are 8am on Sundays, but if you were somewhere that went from Lime St you might manage something earlier.

This. The first bit. I'm not a nice person. I have loved Eurovision forever.

<sniffle>

It's probably a dim question, but how come they never seem to consider choosing a football stadium for a venue - or somewhere like Wimbledon centre court where they already have a roof? Would it simply not work logistically and with all the tech needed, or is it just that they prefer a more 'intimate' venue?

Maybe the organisers take the view that it's primarily an event to watch on TV and that the audience are just there to add atmosphere for that TV show, with their own personal elation at being there just a side-benefit to their main purpose; but 6,000 tickets for an event that millions across Europe want to attend seems pitifully low. I know it's 6,000 for each of nine different shows, but there seem to be a lot of people who somehow manage to wangle going to multiple shows.

I do wonder how a lot of people end up going every year, or at least to several different ones - and they're never in any doubt that they will be going. Do they all know the organisers or some way of circumventing the queues for us normal folk?

It's always explained away with 'Oh, but they are MASSIVE Eurovision fans' - which I have no doubt of at all; but it seems a bit like somebody winning the lottery jackpot 20 times and it being 'justified' with 'Ah, but they have ALWAYS loved the lottery'! In fact, if they have loads of money available, that seems much less unlikely, as the lottery happens twice every week and doesn't limit how many tickets they sell, so you could buy 20 million tickets for a draw if you could afford them!

AFAIK there has in the past been a priority system for "massive Eurovision fans". This year it's been open access for all, including the huge population of the UK who've not hosted the show this century and have seen a lot of publicity on the BBC telling them exactly when and how to apply for tickets.

The Liverpool venue is right at the bottom of the minimum size requirements but they do deliberately choose to stick with mid-sized venues rather than O2 size arenas or football stadiums because when push comes to shove this is a TV show, sponsored by the European Broadcasting Union so the ambience on TV is more important than the experience of the in-person attendees.

Fan tickets.
From 2014-2021 there were around 2,000 ticket packages (fewer in Israel's year) reserved for superfans, chosen by ballot by each of the national fanclubs, and giving access to every show in the week, at a price. It looks like that hasn't happened for the last 2 years - I can see why Liverpool would rather sell tickets to 9 people rather than one, given that they've been able to sell out every single event comfortably.

Look at areas that are covered by the local train lines. Look on Merseyrail website, you have 3 Northern lines covering areas upto Ormskirk, Kirkby and Southport. There are premier inns around some of these or smaller hotels. Short walk to train or bus into city centre. Then there is the south of city less train lines but night buses.
Jelous you got the tickets, but Liverpool will have an amazing atmosphere. Do not book the Adelphi Hotel in the city.

AFAIK there has in the past been a priority system for "massive Eurovision fans".

Ah, this I didn't know! I wonder how you qualify as a 'massive' fan, though?! And if an obvious definition of a 'massive' fan is that you've been to the live shows for lots of years, how do you first get your foot in the door and get tickets to the first one?!

Second the comment about the Adelphi - it's a Britannia hotel which has been Which?'s worst hotel chain in the UK for years!

I think staying somewhere like Ormskirk and getting the train in is your best option. Anywhere with a train line though I bet they won't run late enough. And yes Chester area - there is a Premier Inn at Little Sutton near Ellesmere Port which might potentially still have rooms. It has on a train line to Liverpool.

You'd think that the city authorities would set up some sort of camp site somewhere?

Also look at bedandbreakfast nationwide and see if there is anywhere within a sensible travelling distance.

It's via membership of the official national fan club.