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EBU fact-checking network investigates Eurovision 2025 vo...

The EBU's fact-checking network, Spotlight, has investigated an institutional advertising campaign by an Israeli government agency.

But how does Israel do it? How do they buy the votes/mobilise the people? I doubt theres like so many Israeli people living in San Marino for instance or Iceland

6 minutes ago, Bjork said:

But how does Israel do it? How do they buy the votes/mobilise the people? I doubt theres like so many Israeli people living in San Marino for instance or Iceland

Sim cards/VPNs

To be fair, televote in country like San Marino is... pretty interesting to say the least. There might be like couple of thousand voters overall and consider that there are 25 songs.. One voter can make a big difference.

Edited May 20May 20 by Sour Candy

There is no televote in San Marino, it’s the only country as far as I know which uses a jury only, including in the televote only semi, which explains why they gave 12 to Belgium when basically nobody else voted for the track - it was a backup jury choice.

I get your point though, in smaller countries that do have a televote, it doesn’t take much rigging to get a lot of points.

Some Israel supporters wanted to make a big point and were happy to vote 20 times on five credit cards - there were people boasting on Twitter about doing exactly that. Who else really could be arsed? Nobody is going to sit and vote 100 times for anything unless you have a point to make.

Thanks! That kind of makes sense. The next smallest country in ESC is Iceland (population: 390k) but they are so crazy about the contest so the number of voters is way more significant there.

BBC News

Eurovision: Israel's result prompts questions over voting

Countries including Spain, Ireland and Finland raise concerns about the song contest's public vote.

To make it to BBC news is significant in itself. Shows that the moves that broadcasters across Europe are being noticed, whether anything comes of that or not.

I submitted a complaint to the BBC, focusing on the fairness of the competition and how Israel's televote result was clearly not an organic and fair result given its context, not that I expected them to be joining the chorus of broadcasters calling for an investigation. They should, though.

(of course there is a difference between the result being rigged and illegitimate, which I think any investigation will not find it was, and the result being unfair, which any investigation is going to find harder to rule against)

Eurovision News, external, which is operated by the EBU, said an agency of the Israeli government paid for adverts and used state social media accounts to encourage people to vote for the Israeli entry.

Mr Green said that did not break the rules.

This final line in that article is very concerning, however - that's one of the biggest issues - the Israeli government intervened to pay for ads, and that should be against the rules, before we even get to the content of the ads. Yet if it's not against the EBU rules, it's open season.

That letter from Martin Green does worry me in that they're not going to change anything. All focused on the legitimacy of the votes, no one is really saying that they weren't valid votes cast according to the current rules of the contest, it's how those votes were obtained that is wrong.

Something as simple as banning voting advertisements and reducing the amount of times you can vote for any single song would go a long way towards solving the laughably easy way Israel (or any state actor with the motivation) has to manipulate it.

Agreed Iz. That letter feels so very „there’s nothing to see here“.

No one has questioned if the result is correct but rather that it’s very easily to manipulate if you’re a bad intentioned state actor. And well, Israel aren’t exactly presenting themselves to the world in the best light currently.

And lol at EY being dragged in their as proof of the votes being legit. EY have just finished service a 2 year ban on onboarding new audit clients in Germany because of their completely defective audit of Wirecard for failing to spot 2 BILLION EUROS missing from the company books. I’d no trust EY to boil a kettle

I'm glad that even the BBC is reporting on this.

All over twitter, you had right wing Israel supporters claim that Israel had won, and that the jury had overtuend the public ... yet again. They claimed they had the best song, too, lol. It's ridiculous. We all know why it came second, and it was NOT based on that sappy song's quality. However, it legitimises them in the contest... The Telgrpah had writers saying, "Face it, the Israeli song was good". Um, no. It wasn't., And "good" is NOT enough to win the song contewst. It's why UK's bang average tracks always flop.

Not only that, but it really has warped the results. Would Espresso have won without the campaign? Would Ich Komme have come top 5? Who knows! We really should be looking at an Israeli ban for the forseeable. It is bringing the contest into disrepute. If they don't ban them, and they probably won't because ... money, then as many countries as possible should withdraw and just have a small-scale, bootleg Eurovision of their own. Sidestep the EBU and build the competition from the ground up again.

Slovenia’s broadcaster has threatened to withdraw.

The EBU definitely won’t side with them over Israel, but it’s a good start and I hope some of the bigger countries/broadcasters do the same so more money is on the line and the EBU really have to think about it. Obviously it shouldn’t take them for them to just do what they need to do though.

Think Spain is really gonna push for it, especially since the president is the most anti-Israel person on earth ;)

They are destroying this contest. They let Israel stay, with its dodgy voting campaigns, and then nute the crowds, to avoid us hearing boos or people singing the woeds singing in Maltese... It saps the energy our of entries, which then suffer even more in the televote, and they already have their votes squeezed by Israel.

So I tracked where every 2025 competing country's televote ranked Israel in the final from 2016 through 2025 (no data beyond each country's Top 10 prior to 2016) and there have been some interesting trends I spotted..:

Doesn't prove anything but definitely interesting, but to see that both the 2024 and 2025 entries (both of which are pop ballads) scored higher on average in the televote than not only Unicorn (2023, a pop song with a polished and choreographed performance that ultimately placed 3rd) but also higher than Toy (2018) which was pure televote bait.

I think it's most interesting to see which countries paid Netta/Noa Kirel dust but wound up gushing over their last two entries, like Albania (2018 10th > 2024 2nd), Denmark (2018 11th > 2023 17th > 2024 & 2025 3rd), Estonia (2018 & 2023 16th > 2024 5th), Finland (2023 15th > 2024 1st & 2025 2nd), and Sweden (2023 17th > 2024 and 2025 1st). Even more interesting are the few countries whose support of Israel has actually declined (Armenia, Croatia, and Poland being the most obvious ones)

Anyways, just thought I'd share if anyone finds this interesting.