5 hours ago, eurovision4ever said:

Politics and all that aside, what was everyone’s grower of the contest?

France - from 3/10 to 5/10

Really the only way to fix the contest is to ban Israel until they learn how to behave like adults

I did this just to see how many countries gave the same points to Israel this year compared to last year (yellow = same, red = less, green = more). The results are baffling, because not only the 12s were almost the same everywhere, but other smaller points too, which indicates that in most countries (over 20/36, didn't include Moldova last year and Montenegro this year because they didn't participate in both years) the same people are voting for Israel each year regardless of the song. Croatian people are the true ESC heroes ❤️

It’s insane how israhell got like 90% of the possible votes in the semifinal which might be a record, I haven’t checked it though. It’s really laughable.

I think that’s it for me in terms of travelling to watch Eurovision live from now on, it was a great run from 2016 to this year (missing just ‘21 because Covid/no flights and ‘23 because of train strikes/ticket impossibility) but it’s become too expensive, too crowded and I’m just not the person I was in my twenties who could manage it all better compared to now. As those two off years proved I can still have a great time watching it from the comfort of my own home, and perhaps it’s time to let the new generation have their fun, as I slowly become the old dude regaling them at parties with the time I appeared on TV behind Mans or met Mikolas Josef outside the Lisbon arena.

This time I watched it from the Arena Plus event in the stadium next door to the main hall, which was ok but the bars and especially toilet queues were a bit chaotic and as both the stadium and main hall emptied out at the same time on the same road(!) at the end, all trams and buses were totally rammed and it was another stressful journey back, if not as bad as the hour wait for a train last year.

I intentionally hadn’t heard any of the songs until this week, and everything about Sweden just screamed Eurovision Winner, so while I’m normally grumpy when a country wins who’s already won in recent years (ironically like in 2023) I would have been fine this time. My second favourite was luckily Austria, I always love the operatic entries (La Forza and Zero Gravity especially in previous years) and it was great to have that at least as the winner, in general my scores were the closest to the actual result since Kiev 2017 which was lovely to see, a far cry from 2023 when I got everything hopelessly wrong predicting big points for things like Blood & Glitter and Who the Hell is Edgar!

I…actually quite liked the UK entry? They were my tenth favourite so would have got a point from me, they were really charming and I loved how it sounded like a musical theatre song, best home entry since Spaceman by far for me. As I mentioned a few posts ago I would way rather the UK take risks than give us another Bigger Than Us, so while it clearly didn’t connect with the public at all I’m still very proud of their jury top ten.

In general the crowd were better behaved this year and no one was booed as much, I’m glad for that as whatever everyone’s opinions are on the horrible situation a certain part of the world is in, taking it out on poor Yuval (especially given her backstory) wouldn’t have achieved anything and just created more division and anger among everyone concerned. I did start to worry near the end of the televotes as I feel Israel winning would still have caused some huge situations in the audience (and beyond) that wouldn’t have been pleasant and completely overshadowed the rest of the contest, so I am glad Austria won - and 2014 is far back enough now to feel like a long-awaited win!

Now watch me completely go back on the start of this post in a few months time and end up booking flights to Vienna at the first opportunity 😅

This is a bit biased towards the Nordic countries where ESC is currently gigantic (half of the population of Finland watching for instance), but notice how Israel isn't there - same pattern as last year.

Well he’s not wrong.

Apologies if someone has already done something like this! But I've just trawled through various Spotify / Itunes / Apple Music charts from Sunday / Monday to see what the final leaderboard would look like if points were allocated based on that. Obviously it's an inexact science as I couldn't get the same charts for every country, and some countries I've had to aggregate points based on the others in their pot (and I've almost certainly made some mistakes), but here's what I've calculated:

 Austria ( "Wasted Love") - 366pts

 Estonia ( "Espresso Macchiato") - 349pts

 Germany ( "Baller") - 291pts

 Sweden ( "Bara bada bastu") - 278pts

 Italy ( "Volevo essere un duro") - 190pts

 Norway ( "Lighter") - 173pts

 Finland ( "Ich komme") - 95pts

 Iceland ( "Róa") - 67pts

 Israel ( "New Day Will Rise") - 48pts

 Greece ( "Asteromata") - 48pts

 Netherlands ( "C'est la vie") - 42pts

 France ( "Maman") - 33pts

 Lithuania ( "Tavo akys") - 31pts

 Denmark ( "Hallucination") - 30pts

 San Marino ( "Tutta l'Italia") - 24pts

 Switzerland ( "Voyage") - 22pts

 Portugal ( "Deslocado") - 14pts

 Luxembourg ( "La poupée monte le son") - 12pts

 Albania ( "Zjerm") - 9pts

 Latvia ( "Bur man laimi") - 8pts

 Malta ( "Serving") - 8pts

 United Kingdom ( "What the Hell Just Happened?") - 6pts

 Ukraine ( "Bird of Pray") - 1pts

 Spain ( "Esa diva") - 0pts

 Poland ( "Gaja") - 0pts

 Armenia ( "Survivor") - 0pts

Same winner, but a few more significant differences downstream! Full spreadsheet is here if anyone wants a nosey.

I kinda love how almost everyone including Petra Mede and Tommy Cash just pretend that Israhell don't exist in ESC these days.

Im probably alone in saying this but i found this years contest overall very disappointing, i felt there was something really missing this year plus i really felt the songs were so much weaker this year than the last numerous years.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdhLnah6/

Interesting that Remember Monday have the most viewed final performance on Tik Tok!

3 hours ago, Tafty said:

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZNdhLnah6/

Interesting that Remember Monday have the most viewed final performance on Tik Tok!

People had to rewatch alot to try and figure what the hell that was xo

I was thinking about that performance and I'd like to know who thought that "day after hangover mixed with Disney princesses from Temu" would smash.

Bye bye Israhell

Edited May 21May 21 by Sour Candy

Losing 40% out of 100 streams is not that big of a number lol

What happened after 2016 and 2021?!

I don't know about 2017, but 2022 was partly presumably the loss of the Russian audience?

Also, I think peak interest in Eurovision was 2016! That contest was STACKED (plus iirc that year was the year they had an actual global Superstar in the interval, right? Justin Timberlake performing 'Can't Stop the Feeling') so that had huge hype then. So they were always going to have quite the drop in viewers, I reckon.

I'll just blame the fact 2017 had the dullest song become the major front runner

Yeah I think people didn’t like Jamala winning hence the unfortunate drop. I also agree that that year was weak overall too.