Eurovision 2025 - After Thoughts

[RedToothBrush]

Austria's JJ won with Wasted Love

C’est la vie

'C'est la la Vie' - it's French for 'Here's the toilet'.

Was it the German entry "Baller"? It went Bal la la la la la I think

Both the Dutch and the German entries had 'la la la la' in them. (Helpful, I know).

'C'est la la la la vie' and 'ich ba-la-la-la-er Löcher in die Nacht'.

I don’t think so - it was not “this song is great, fab tune from lovely person” and I’d not seen ads of this type for any other contestant. By and large, what I’ve seen for other contestants was just the usual style personal recommendations with links to the songs.

These ads were much more like party politicals of the type which imply you are a bad person if you don’t agree with them and support them. I only saw them in places where you might reasonably expect a higher percentage of Jewish followers/interest.

I agree. And the campaign extended to the wording of the Facebook 'ads' being copied and pasted all over forums on the internet. Including here. Written as if they were original thoughts.

Whichever way you spin that that's a highly designed information campaign and a well worn path during various other social phenomena and events such as the recent riots, the election , the US election , Covid, and Brexit.

These ads were much more like party politicals of the type which imply you are a bad person if you don’t agree with them and support them.

I think that's a stretch.

No, it wasn't a soft sell based on the loveliness of the song.

The 'backstory', the flag, the production values - just no.

I know what I saw, and it 'wasn't in the spirit' of what is actually a song contest, not a backstory competition.

I was targeted because the algorithm identifed me as a potential supporter of Israel in the Eurovision, not a certain song in the Eurovision. I watch Eurovision related YouTube material and I follow Holocaust ed and investigation sites and organisations. I'm in the middle of a venn diagram.

Money was spent on this and imo the competition was hijacked.

I hope the EBU will do a thorough investigation and I hope heads will roll.

Money was spent on this and imo the competition was hijacked.
I hope the EBU will do a thorough investigation and I hope heads will roll.

Is it against the rules of the competition to do targeted advertising? What about if I was targeted by Italy because I sometimes talk about Italian evening classes on social media?

(I agree that I don't like it but I am not sure if it is against the rules!)

There was a song titled La La La long long long ago. Spanish entry. And it win!
It has very few lines of lyrics, but they are very strong lyrics.
There was indeed a song with lalala, because I did think of the old winner on Saturday. But... I cannot remember which one. So I am of zero help!

The entire invasion business points to the existence of a concerted effort, as expressed in the ads aimed at SM feeds in the US.

It may well be that it's so unheard of and unimaginable that there is no rule.

Hopefully that will be remedied, but I can't imagine it would be easy to police.

Perhaps ending the global voting would be easier to enforce, though determined parties would probably find a way to subvert that too.

Plus the EBU presumably makes a good deal of money from places where you have to pay to vote.

Maybe a return to jury voting only is the answer.

I can’t really see that they’ll want to give up the voting revenue and make it jury only again. It’s an expensive thing to put on.

Agree. And if it was jury only, surely we would need some kind of marks from the judges (artistic merit, complexity of tune or whatever) so we don’t just get one jury always giving 12 votes to their favourite neighbour

YY @SheilaFentiman

Ukraine and Israel should not be in the contest until ceasefire and peace agreements are agreed and signed.

To continue to use them for sympathy votes and revenue is profiting from war.

It's a song contest.

I spoke to work colleagues this morning and they only tuned in to listen to the UK entry, then watched something else. They said that it wasn't the same as the years when they were younger.

You mean like what people used to say about ToTP?! 😂

Did anyone watch the C5 programme about Eurovision in the 70s? It was a mildly diverting programme . One fun bit was their explanations of all the rule changes.

It's astonishing how many people "Don't watch that rubbish" but, amazingly, all seem to manage to "catch a bit of it" - and it always seems to be the specific bit that you're talking about!

These are the very same people who "haven't seen it for yeeeears" but will then go on tell you in quite some detail about why [insert random song from this year - not their own country's that's been publicised elsewhere] was rubbish too!

Am sure the Eurovision powers that be in each country and overall will be studying all the televote data this week. How big was the margin between first and second place songs in each country? How many votes did each phone number submit? How many votes did each phone number voting for Israel submit? Were there adequate restrictions in place to stop a phone number voting in multiple countries votes? Etc etc

i didn’t vote but was surprised to discover you could have 20 votes each. A family who are letting kids have votes should be fine with 2-5 votes per phone. Each person can still vote for 1-3 countries each. I would say that the people voting 20 times likely voted for only 1 country rather than their 10 favourites so allowing 20 votes just opens the contest open to manipulation.

For those of you who voted, how many times did you vote and how many different countries got those votes?

I woke up with the OoH OOh Oooh bit from Birds of Pray as my earworm.

Voted 7 times, one vote each country, but 2 of them were the DC's choices who are gamers and were itching to be back online as soon as the last song was finished. So I voted on their behalf.

Italy
Austria
San Marino
Norway
Germany
Sweden
Estonia

So in a household with two teens, each with mobile phones, would we have been able to vote 60 times for Israel if we wanted?

I was the only one who voted in our house. I voted 4 times in total, once each for Estonia, Iceland, Malta and Sweden.

Just re-listened to Netherlands. That’s the one I was thinking if. Had a singalong chorus. Came 12 so mid-table.