Poland, Ukraine land 2012 Euro Cup

By Kevin Hilton

SVG Europe correspondent

Poland and Ukraine have been chosen as the joint hosts of the UEFA Euro 2012 football tournament. The surprise announcement was made at a presentation in Cardiff, Wales on Wednesday but at present no decision has been made on the host broadcaster for the event.

Currently the public broadcaster of the host country co-ordinates the central television and radio coverage, working with UEFA Media Technologies. A spokesman for UEFA said that as broadcast rights were still being sold for Euro 2008 in Switzerland and Austria, no such preparations had yet been made for the 2012 tournament.

Broadcasting rights for Euro 2008 are being sold on a market by market basis and the UEFA spokesman said the arrangement of using a local broadcaster to provide host facilities might change after the 2008 event, which could hint at the creation of a stand-alone body along the lines of HBS (Host Broadcast Services), which now provides services for the World Cup.

Poland and Ukraine hope to emulate the success of Portugal in hosting Euro 2004, now regarded as the best event of its kind so far, despite the country being something of a surprise choice as host. The president of the Polish Football Association, Michał Listkiewicz, commented, “UEFA’s policy to grant big tournaments to new regions and new countries is a really great initiative. Millions of Poles have been dreaming of staging such an event in our country [and] now this dream is coming true.”

Grigoriy Surkis, president of the Football Federation of Ukraine, said that staging the tournament in two time zones will give “the impetus to build a new infrastructure and to come close to the European standard”. New stadiums will be built in Gdansk and Warsaw in Poland and Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk, Ukraine. Eight other grounds will be refurbished.