Eurovision 2025 - After Thoughts

[RedToothBrush]

Austria's JJ won with Wasted Love

You can think as you wish but I know what I saw and it wasn’t like any of the mentions/ads for other contestants.

As with the ads math and piggy saw - they were materially different from “great song, this is my fave, link here” type recommendations I saw for other contestants and they crossed a line.

I think I probably saw the same ad, if it was the one that focused on the traumatic experience of the singer at the Nova festival? That didn't say to me that I was a bad person by not voting. I might argue that Slovenia (I think it was Slovenia) who brought a cancer survivor up on stage at the end of their song and publicised their song as a triumph over tragedy was using emotional blackmail to coax me into voting. I don't buy that either of them did that.

There were 4 people voting in my house, each did the full 20 votes. DD voted 20 times for one country, DH split his between three countries 14,4,2. Friend did 8, 8 and 4 votes between 3 countries. I voted for 13 countries in total (I know that wasn’t wise) 4,3,2,2 and nine 1s. So a range of tactics but a large number of people all giving 20 votes to one country would skew things significantly of course.

One person one vote would work for me. It would link to a democratic norm.

Of course it could be subverted, but what's the point really of multiple votes for one position: contest winner?

I saw several different variants none of which would match your description. Maybe math saw others or the same. I’m based in the UK but some of the groups they appeared in were not. These kind of more targeted ads are usually targeted based on the reader’s location and engagement interest combined with any other activity history they have for the reader.

I also saw the promo/recommendation type ads for other contestants, some of which included a bit of journey story to mention challenges/other points as you describe. None of them were anything like the adverts I saw for the Israeli entry which were on a different level of manipulative advertising.

I would guess they were targeted at Jewish diaspora voters from the wording and phrasing but I wouldn’t presume to know for sure.

I suppose the argument would be that the juries don't only get to choose one country to vote for. Moreover, as you can't assign points to indicate your level of preference when voting from home, all you have is to give differing numbers of votes to support the countries' songs that you like, but also to maintain the differential between the ones you quite like and the ones that you absolutely love.

I suppose most people would be 'crazy' enough to actually award votes based on their opinions of the songs, and they would either vote once or twice for one country or maybe once each for five countries, twice each for another three and then four times for their big favourite - all of which (imho) is a fair democratic process.

Voting 20 times for one country - especially if you haven't even heard/aren't basing anything on their actual song - is very clearly a fraudulent abuse of the clear intentions of the voting system. Some may also say that this was widely the case in 2022.

Incidentally, does anybody have any experience/knowledge of how things work in Junior Eurovision, where you're allowed to vote for your own country?

Doesn't this just give a massively unfair advantage to the likes of Germany, France, the UK and Italy - whilst making it almost impossible for San Marino, Luxembourg or Malta to win - or are people fairer and more honest in their votes their (or just not see it as a big enough deal to care about)?

It also occurs to me that, if we were to blanket-ban countries that are involved in war from competing - as has been suggested by some on this thread - on the sole grounds that they couldn't host the following year if they won, would it not also follow that we should ban tiny countries from competing as well? After all, there's no possible way that San Marino could ever have a suitable venue with a capacity of more people than actually live in the country, without asking Italy for a 'favour'!

Iceland too - as they not only have a very small population, but also the geographic distance from the rest of Europe. Would they have the infrastructure for travel and accommodation for tens of thousands of people?

Australia as well: they've said that, should they win, they would partner with a European country to host it from, because of the massive distance for people to have to travel.

Maybe also some of the poorer countries who would find it a huge struggle to fund the contest to the extravagant standard that it's now reached as expected?

Even France once pleaded poverty, so the UK stepped in to host it instead!

Junior ESC was won a few years ago by an excellent winner from Armenia. (Qami qami)

Voting 20 times for one country - especially if you haven't even heard/aren't basing anything on their actual song - is very clearly a fraudulent abuse of the clear intentions of the voting system.

It isn't against the rules of the voting system in any way. People can vote multiple times for the song they love or the performer they love or the country they love (hence the UK televote seems to give a hefty score to Poland every year - or maybe we all just really love those Polish entries?). Personally, I would prefer it if Eurovision toned down the nationalism by dropping the questionable flag parade they introduced, which has nothing to do with songs.

It's not against the rules to vote 20 times for the entry you wish to win.

It is against the spirit (and I would argue aims) of the competition to vote 20 times for a country that one may not even have heard the song for, following a targeted AD campaign designed to elicit a vote on the basis of sympathetic or nationalistic point scoring.

But I support Israel coming second and do not think it is right for there to be a review of the current rules just because they nearly caused disaster by winning.

It was up to the EBU to fix this issue. They've had a few years now. Ukraine won on the basis of sympathy and nationalistic feeling. That stood. Why? Because Ukraine were the good guys in the narrative? Ok then. So now Israel (and I daresay others) see themselves as good guys in the narrative and voted on nationalism.

Fine.

It would be huge double standards to make changes now, and Israel could quite legitimately complain about bias if there's any complaint about it.

PP also makes a good point that not every country participating can host if they win.

It could be made that

1. Instead of each country having a jury, there are a panel of judges (like in ice skating or whatever) from a range of countries who have to give marks on a specific basis to each song/performance. The marks are then ranked. There's no point complaining that the public vote politically when many juries do too!
2. There are as may points as there are countries in the competition so no one can get nul points from the public, the best you can get is 26 points and the worst is 1 point.
3. Don't quite know how the weighting would work with the above but I'm sure it could be managed.

From an article on the Netherlands response to Saturdays vote:

The Netherlands is the sixth country to raise questions with the European Broadcasting Union following the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Basel, Switzerland. RTVE of Spain, VRT of Belgium, RÚV of Iceland and Yle of Finland, have all raised questions regarding the voting at the contest, while RTVSLO of Slovenia has called for a debate on whether Israel should still be allowed to compete.

Prior to the Eurovision Song Contest the European Broadcasting Union has committed to a ‘wider discussion’ regarding Israel’s participation in the contest.

As I said on Saturday, had Israel won then I really think the contest would have been destroyed. These responses contradict that.

I think these are good ideas.

I think the weighting issue is a sidetrack.

We're used to seeing winners who have massive points margins, but I actually really liked the diversity of 12 pointers this year. My main complaint when Loreen won again was that there were several other excellent songs aside from Finland that could have deserved a douze, but the juries were single-minded.

If it came down to a tie, it could go with top points for the public, then top for the juries.

It would also kill off some of the political complaints, as people could see that presumably the UK didn't come last - just not top 11, which is what you need to score anything.

I know it would potentially turn the whole thing on its head, but I just wonder how things might pan out if we focused on voting for the actual artist rather than voting for countries.

Each participating country would still send one entrant to represent them, but then the votes would be ascribed to the artist with only minimal incidental mentions of their country.

I suppose that could backfire, as unpopular acts would then feel the flak and criticism personally, rather than their country as a whole taking the punches - which I don't think any reasonable person would want. I was very glad that Iceland did get some votes from the public in the end - how heartbreaking it must be to put your all into it and not come away with a single point.

I don't see how that's possible - I don't think there's a huge amount of mention of the countries on the night itself and there's no way of not knowing which country the singers are from.

Just as some people will vote on Strictly cos they fancy one of the dancers or cos they liked the last role the actor was in, some will always vote by country and not performance on Eurovision.

@TheNinkyNonkyIsATardis I agree re points margins, it was noted that Austria's score would usually have placed them 3rd to 5th rather than 1st, but I think a close competition is often a good one!

No, I agree it absolutely wouldn't work in practice.

Was just pondering out loud.

I really enjoyed the tension of knowing that a lot of countries attracted votes.

In 23, all countries 7th and below scored less than 200. In 24 this was 8th and below. This year it was 11th and below, and Finland still scored 196.

It would make standout winners even more exciting.

How on earth could you forget Johnny?

I'm actually a lot less inclined to vote next year. Whoever's behind the shenanigans got their act to fifth last year and second this year by a tiny margin - they only need a few tweaks to their system to get first. It feels my votes will be a waste of money in 2026.

The more I think about it the more I think the only solution is to remove the act.

I feel the same way. I think they should be banned from competing.

Or perhaps they got a lot more votes than they would have done in response to the protests? That would be something that many people would do if they saw such protests no matter the country they were aimed at.

Possibly - and the individual singer of course had an awful time which could lead to personal sympathy.

I doubt it