After a month and a half of silence, Basel City has finally spoken up regarding the mysterious disappearance of Arena Plus videos from the Swiss YouTube domain, “due to a legal complaint from the government”. According to the official statement sent to Pipeaway, the Eurovision pre-party has been blocked from view as a part of “measures that prevent the spread of harmful hidden messages”, as Basel refuses its events “to be a platform for such content”.
The problematic message was buried inside third-party stock footage used at the event. Once detected, the case was handed over to Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Centre
With 36.000 stadium attendees, the Arena Plus event in Basel was supposed to be remembered as the greatest public viewing of the Eurovision Song Contest. But now, memory is being erased, with cold black screens showing up instead of all YouTube footage of the show in Switzerland.
The purge came after Pipeaway revealed that subliminal messages had been projected on the stadium’s screen cube during Croatian star Marko Purišić’s performance (you might know him better as Baby Lasagna – more on the controversy here). Among the flashing frames: an image calling for anonymous donations to jihad.
What some Eurovision fans initially dismissed as a hoax, YouTube has now confirmed as very real. And with the platform removing Arena Plus videos on request from Swiss authorities, Basel City has at last issued its side of the story.
According to them, the message was buried inside third-party stock footage used at the event – footage that slipped past organizers unnoticed. Once detected, the case was handed over to Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Centre.
Still, the city downplays the visuals’ impact, insisting the frames (appearing three times during the “Rim Tim Tagi Dim” performance) lasted only “a split second” and were “not visible to guests in the Arena Plus”.
Yet there’s a curious contradiction here: if the messages were imperceptible – as subliminals are designed to be – why did those “invisible” frames become harmful as soon as they went online? Why was the footage not deemed inappropriate for only Basel-owned platforms, but was instead subjected to full-scale YouTube censorship?
Emails also went subliminal
In Basel’s official statement, Christoph Bosshardt – Head of External Affairs and Marketing in the Department of Presidential Affairs of the Canton of Basel-Stadt – offered an apology for Pipeaway’s repeated emails “going unnoticed” at media-arenaplus@bs.ch. “This email address is no longer used since the event is over”, explained Mr. Bosshardt.
We should clarify, however, that Pipeaway’s inquiries to the official media contact for the event were sent on May 20th, May 21st, June 10th, and June 23rd. Only the final message bounced back as “not delivered”.
In fact, the first information request on the authorship of the cube visuals that turned problematic was sent practically on the second working day after the Eurovision finale – on Tuesday, for the event that finished in the early hours of Sunday, May 18th. That’s hardly a late or unreasonable follow-up.
It is somewhat odd that emails go unnoticed on the email address set up specifically and only so that media inquiries could get noticed, especially when the largest cultural event of Basel’s year is in question.
When an event ends with a cybersecurity investigation, one would expect a bit more attention to the inbox.
The Show Must Go Off
To close, here is the full response from Basel City – the first and only official comment addressing the mysterious subliminal frame that flickered through the Arena Plus show.
Basel supports any measures that prevent the spread of harmful hidden messages and does not want Arena Plus or any of its other events to be a platform for such contentChristoph Bosshardt
Below is the statement in its entirety:
The City of Basel is proud to have hosted the Arena plus Public Viewing Show with many great artists. Videos of the event and the great atmosphere have been widely shared on Social Media, for example on @eurovisioncountdown, where they can still be found.
As part of the live show, stock footage was used on the screens. After the show in May, it was brought to the organisers’ attention that a hidden frame appeared in the footage. This frame lasted for a split second and thus went unnoticed during the preparations of the screen content; also, it was not visible to guests in the Arena Plus. When the hidden frame was detected, the stock footage platform was informed, and the incident was reported to the National Cyber Security Centre.
Whilst there was never an intention to censor the show, Basel supports any measures that prevent the spread of harmful hidden messages and does not want Arena Plus or any of its other events to be a platform for such content.
Best regards,
Christoph Bosshardt
Head of External Affairs and Marketing
Department of Presidential Affairs of the Canton of Basel-Stadt
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Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, meaning if you click on them and make a purchase, Pipeaway may make a small commission, at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting our work! Images in this article have been sourced from Mood Studios AG via Kanton Basel-Stadt.
