Televoting results in this year's Eurovision has been all over the place, with many question marks whether the results really truly reflect what the public likes.

However, main thing why I open this thread is that broadcasters are requesting a debate about the televoting process, and we'll see whether changes will be in place for next year's contest.

It's not really "a fiasco" imo - apart from the voting being open from the start of the final which helps campaigning as the final happens AND that it is not forbidden to pay for ads.

Edited May 18May 18 by Sour Candy

I would say Israel was the only truly questionable/position not based entirely on song result for me. The other big televotes were popular songs/high diaspora etc. YouTube views after the semis tallied a lot with the high results for Estonia/Austria/Sweden, and even Poland/Greece to a lesser extent. Obviously there were a few outliers with the YouTube stats, like Spain, but we know how passionate Spanish fans are at supporting their own.

I agree that paid ads should be banned and voting not open until after the songs have all been performed. Although it's all extra $$$$ for the EBU of course, which is a shady organisation at best so I don't expect them to change it in a hurry.

I'd love to know the following:

• Total number of votes cast per entry, by country i.e. just the numerical breakdown of the result

• Total number of unique voters per entry

• Number of times a voter votes for a particular entry on average, which is just a function of the two values above

• When there is a surge of votes and how that differs by entry (when lines open/once song is performed/once all songs are performed and they play the recaps).

Transparency would help!

8 minutes ago, gooddelta said:

I would say Israel was the only truly questionable/position not based entirely on song result for me. The other big televotes were popular songs/high diaspora etc. YouTube views after the semis tallied a lot with the high results for Estonia/Austria/Sweden, and even Poland/Greece to a lesser extent. Obviously there were a few outliers with the YouTube stats, like Spain, but we know how passionate Spanish fans are at supporting their own.

Yes, at this point there is one bad apple, and that is Israel taking advantage of the system which basically works pretty well for the general public overall. The MAJORITY of people are still voting for their favourite songs.

Like said in the other thread, neighboring countries tend to favor each other anyway. For instance, Bara Bada Bastu has been HUGE in the Nordic countries, but I never expected it to do mega-well in Southern Europe because of the obvious difference in the culture and taste in music and that is completely fine.

Edited May 18May 18 by Sour Candy

They need a way to put Ireland back on the main show regularly. For Luxembourg to be there and not Ireland is absurd. Then have an app where you vote like a judge. So like someone said in the other thread. 12 10 etc on various ones but just one vote per person. I think that should end the Israel shenanigans though they’ll probably claim the change is biased against them and empowers antisemitism

What Ireland failing to qualify has to do with this? They were in the grand final finishing 6th just last year.

If Ireland hadn’t sent such shite they could’ve made the final 👀 Nothing to do with anything lol

Presumably the whole point of allowing 20 televotes per person is so that they can spread their points between a few countries they like, and not so that they can allocate 20 to the same entry. It should be maximum 3 or 4 for a single country I reckon.

I like to know how we got Zero points, and another country got the same as us.

I did find it quite odd how Israel got a huge amount though.

We didn't appear in the top ten vote of any single country (same as Switzerland).

The highest we appeared in an individual televote was 18th! So we were nowhere near scoring even 1 point. James Newman's Embers got closer to scoring 😢

I'm not absolutely shocked but I thought we could at least get a point or two from Australia, Malta or Ireland. It's a shame to be so far away again and not really a deserved zero imo.

Edited May 18May 18 by gooddelta

Yeah I also thought UK would get at least some attention from the public. Hopefully next year more attention will be paid towards the story and the staging because the performers were great vocally and in terms of stage presence.

https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/s/c6qB0rk1f4

17 hours ago, Liam Sota said:

They need a way to put Ireland back on the main show regularly. For Luxembourg to be there and not Ireland is absurd. Then have an app where you vote like a judge. So like someone said in the other thread. 12 10 etc on various ones but just one vote per person. I think that should end the Israel shenanigans though they’ll probably claim the change is biased against them and empowers antisemitism

Why does Ireland have more right to qualify than anyone else?

The idea of a 12, 10, 8 and so on vote is cute and would be fun but I think that would still be open to gaming, they would just do Israel 12 and then look at the odds or something and put songs nobody cares about high and screw up the scoring anyway. I guess if it’s one vote each it would work kind of, since the problem appears to be the volume of votes for Israel not individual votes. Especially as they’ve bought SIM cards and manipulated it that way. The app element of a 12-1 vote would also work I suppose but I think less people would be inclined to vote if they had to download an app, and rank songs, which again might give more power to the vote rigging and manipulation. It’s more accessible to just vote as we do now, and at the end of the day the appeal and power of Eurovision is that it is for all of Europe, not just for the fans.

It would definitely be interesting to see an average number of votes received. I hope enough broadcasters at the very least put pressure on the EBU to be as transparent as possible and get to the bottom of what’s going on.

Fundamentally, I just don’t think we should have to have a convoluted rehaul of the voting system when the problem can be solved by banning one country. Obviously they won’t do that, Azerbaijan did similar at the start of the 2010s (it peaked with them coming 2nd in 2013 with a song that had 0 hype and nobody cared about) and bought votes, I can’t remember if it was SIM cards or just paying people to vote or something, but still. They didn’t even get banned for that. But then there is another reason why (both countries) they could be banned ofc, hmmm

35 minutes ago, uhsting said:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eurovision/s/c6qB0rk1f4

Good to see some movement on this from a big 5 broadcaster. Interesting that the final vote was 10 times that of the semi, though I'm not familiar with how that compares to normal statistics.

Definitely need a more precise breakdown and audits. An audit shouldn't be a major obstacle for any broadcasters.

I’m shocked that the broadcasters don’t have access to the detailed voting stats and are even being denied those upon request. EBU are really choosing one single broadcaster’s hill to die on over literally everyone else and for what exactly? Moroccanoil? Is the situation with potential big sponsors really that dire?

It’s so bizarre to claim the reason for this is Eurovision being apolitical while making or allowing multiple political statements left and right.

1 hour ago, pavi said:

I’m shocked that the broadcasters don’t have access to the detailed voting stats and are even being denied those upon request. EBU are really choosing one single broadcaster’s hill to die on over literally everyone else and for what exactly? Moroccanoil? Is the situation with potential big sponsors really that dire?

It’s so bizarre to claim the reason for this is Eurovision being apolitical while making or allowing multiple political statements left and right.

This is what I don't understand either. SURELY Eurovision is a massive enough, cultural event that they wouldn't struggle to find a new sponsor?

MORE broadcasters need to join Spain's current campaign. Especially another one of the "big 5"! I know BBC won't so that's pointless, but I'd hope one of the others would join Spain.

Spotify could just go and sponsor a SONG CONTEST (they are probably too busy to focus on promoting podcasts anyway but just an idea...)

Soain prime minister also called for an Israeli ban. The Spanish being the leaders of Europe :clap: