However, for the Eurovision Song Contest 1972, the BBC broke this trend and chose to host the competition in the Scottish capital, marking the first time that London had not been chosen.

Following Monaco's win at the 1971 contest in Dublin, with the song "Un banc, un arbre, une rue" performed by Séverine, the winning broadcaster Télé Monte Carlo (TMC) planned to organise the 1972 contest as an open-air event, setting the date in June rather than early spring.

[3] However, due to a lack of funding, TMC sought help from the French public broadcaster, Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF), which accepted to organise the contest.

It has hosted concerts and events since its construction in 1914 and can hold approximately 2,900[7] people in its recently restored auditorium, which is well loved by performers due to its acoustics.

For the public voting sequence after the interval act, the jury members were shown on the stage's screen with each lifting a signboard with the number between 1 and 5 for each song, as a visual verification of the scores they had awarded earlier.

Broadcasters were able to send commentators to provide coverage of the contest in their own native language and to relay information about the artists and songs to their television viewers.

[14] In addition to the participating countries, the contest was also reportedly broadcast in Iceland, Israel, Morocco, and Tunisia; in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania via Intervision; and Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Zaire.