aw, azerbaijan voting for latvia is a delightful surprise. it's interesting to see the tastes of different countries, especially countries that export mostly pop music. i've seen that Turan and Tural's song is actually being received extremely positively with South Korean fans, which is sweet.
This data suggests that Finnish televoters didn´t do any tactical voting in the Grand Final. Loreen did get only 5 points from Finland in this Semi-Final 1 which means that zero points from Finnish televoters in the Grand Final was in line with this result. My point is that there were absolutely no need for Finnish tactical voting in the Semi-Final 1 because it was obvious that Käärijä would go to the Grand Final and also that he would win the Semi-Final.
Yes, thank you! I think people need to understand that most casual voters are single vote only. They vote their personal favorite unlike megafans that reach the 20 votes per person allowed easily - or more seriously speaking just spread out their vote in general. I feel like this is lost on people arguing about the reasons or intentions for the result that shocked Finns themselves just as much as others. More fans watch the semifinals proportinally, when more casual viewers watch the grand final. If you end up at top three of enough people five points is pretty reasonable. This year Sweden simply wasn't the top choice for enough voters to end up in our overall top 10 in the grand final televote. People don't just vote for stuff they don't like, and I think it's pretty pretentious for some people to just expect Loreen to be the number one here, like we're just faking it to do better ourselves. In order to be true that would need to be true for each casual voter individually, which is dumb. It's the silliest controvercy of the year. That being said, another thing that is missing from the conversation is that all Finns this year - as in the general public, even those usually indifferent about Eurovision - were aware of the never seen before situation we were in, the ultimate competition between us and Sweden, and of the fact that this is a now or never opportunity for us. Never before during the social media era have we even dreamed about winning. The general public still held the 90's talking point of Finland having zero chance - and even more so the 80's talking point of Finnish language song having such nonexistent chances of succeeding it's practically waste to participate. It doesn't need to be tactical, not to mention a nation wide conspiracy or ill intent against Sweden. The general overwhelming positivity for Käärijä genuinely shifted the focus elsewhere, Loreen wasn't the sort of Big Thing here this year in comparison to the crazy hype for Käärijä. Not even Lordi was this popular or universally liked among Finns.
Ah, that's a good point. I believed that there was tactical voting going on in the final, but now I'm not sure. Because I just checked, and all the songs that Finland voted for in the final were either ahead of Sweden in semi 1, or came from semi 2.
Exactly! We Finns know it, that Loreen not getting any televote points from Finland wasn't due to tactical voting, so those suggestions by Swedes /Sweden are quite preposterous :(
@@AammaK I know what you mean, but I certainly hope this wasn't a "now or never opportunity for us", but that Finland is now a new Eurovision powerhouse - frankly the statistics of 2020's point that way, as someone calculated Finland is now the 4th most successful country by average placing in 2020's Eurovisions! And I hope next year we'll take sweet revenge and win the actual trophy too (even if we now did win people's hearts)!! :D
I only came to truly appreciate Latvia during the actual show. Looking at the results, I feel they should've been the 10th qualifiers, even though I liked Serbia's originality. I'm from Brazil and I wanted to vote but my card didn't allow me for some reason, but Finland, Portugal and (last minute) Latvia were my picks.
Honestly think Latvia just needs to keep doing them! Not helpful to go into 'what ifs' of course but I can't help but feel that just the little bit of luck to draw them into the second half or the second semi this year could well have seen them go through. Biggest wish for 2024 is Latvia and Georgia to get through! Such big NQ streaks aren't good for anyone :( Thanks Tom for yet another great video!
That depends how they are done. In Israel we had a system of selection via the so called "the next star" show. That format was very jury heavy and vocals heavy (essentially see who can sing covers better and if even one juror dislikes you're out)so yes they qualified and by sheer luck one of them actually won (only the artist was selected and the composer got creative), all the rest had relatively good with juries but flopped in televotes. Last year we had a wrong format that caused a non-qualifier so they played it safe this year with a committee.
@@shlomomarkman6374 Shlomo, that sounds very intense. More about finding an artist to represent, than finding the song. I prefer the standard nation final, like say Estonia or Portugal, where the songs are all presented and they compete to win. Still at least your system is a bit more open that say the UK where it is all a big secret now between the BBC and the record company they hired. 👍
@@alipanroosendaal9503 That's actually the format we had in the 80's and early 90's, where you pick the artist AND the song, and guess what, we were top 5 on nearly every year back then. Then they relapsed to "commitees" who secretly chose random unknown artists and guess what happened in the 2000's and early 2010's - we flopped BAD. Then we got to choose again with shows X factor style, and since 2015 we did well again! (Other than last year that is). Now we're back to those secret commitees again and yeah, Noa is a queen, but I'm not sure the other picks to follow are gonna play out like this...
@@alipanroosendaal9503 The truth is that Israelis mostly lost interest in the ESC since the golden days of the 80's and 90's and since it became a commitment of 3 shows, 40 countries, no neighbours or "blocks" on our side etc. So if not for a prime time show like X factor, no one would care about a national selection and it would have about 0% rating.
21:00 I expected Israel to get those rotw points from the middle east especially from Turkey. Unicorn was a huge hit there. I'm happy Latvia got 8 points but I think the rotw voters are almost all just eurofans, and eurofans wanted Latvia in (some voting for Latvia instead of their sure qualifier favs just for this semi), which makes sense - rotw viewers are less likely to be random viewers. It's like eurofans had a better say on rotw than the eurofans who are voting from a participating country since they are outnumbered by casual viewers.
Latvia was SO close to qualifying! But also, I'm not sure I could have handled a result where Serbia didn't qualify. haha. I'm surprised Norway didn't do better but it might have been a combination of being so early in the show and people thinking she'll be fine so I'll vote for something else.
I understand why you say that, but the producers need to make the show as entertaining as possible, so they want to keep the big attractions for the key part of the show
Do not agree. Sure a bookies favourite like Sweden and Finland would survive any slot. But it is not fair to give the favourite a disadvantage just because they are favourites. Also Finland would need the second worst slot then. It is a strange system, it is like handicap in golf and that really is not used professionally. The slots are one of the problems with the televotes. There are many.
I would imagine that the 6 points from Azerbaijan to latvia is related to the fact that Latvia and Moldova were the only other former USSR countries in the Semi Final. It's interesting because the former USSR voting block was so powerful in past contests, but ever since the exclusion of Russia and Belarus, it doesn't get very much attention anymore, but we definitely still shouldn't ignore its impact on the results. On a different note, I'm so sad for Malta. I voted for them 5 times and really hoped they would qualify, only for them to come last. TVM have confirmed that they will conduct a Maltese songwriting camp for the 2024 preselection in the hopes of encouraging more homegrown entries, so here's hoping that pays off. In general though I think it was just the running order that killed them. We saw Norway, Malta and Serbia underperform in the semi final as a result of their televote, especially Norway which came 3rd in the final but only 6th in the semi. If the EBU decides to keep the semi finals as televote only, something really should be done to combat this. Maybe a recap of the first half of songs half way through the running order would help? As for Ireland, I am actually delighted that we did not qualify. That song and performance represented everything that is wrong with the Irish delegation, an outdated, generic, commercially produced pop song about unity. It is like they looked at Russia's formula for success in 2013-2015 and decided to copy that, despite it being 10 years later. I really don't like Micheal Healy's attitude to the contest in general, for example when he blamed Brooke not qualifying on corrupt juries, despite the fact we didn't even place top 10 with the televote. I am sure he's a lovely man but at what point do you take a step back and say 'okay I am not right for this job'. Under his tenure as head of delegations we have achieved 8 non-qualifications and 2 qualifications (ranking 26th and 16th). The Late Late Show selection along with Michael Healy needs to be dumped in exchange for either a dedicated national final framed as a celebration and promotion of Irish music, which can maybe be partnered with a local city council in order to divert some costs such as 'Galway Fest' or 'Fleá Phoirt Lairge' or something. Or go back to internal selection and sponsor an Irish songwriting camp, such as used in Austria and Norway, or partner with a record label like the UK and Cyprus does. As the country with the highest GDP per capita, second to Luxembourg, we really have no excuse for being unable to produce a decent national final on the scale of much smaller countries like Estonia, Iceland, Malta, Latvia, Croatia and Albania. Anyways, rant over. As always keep up the brilliant content Tom!!!
Really appreciate this analysis Tom! Absolutely gutted to see that Latvia just missed out on qualifying. Fingers crossed that EBU releases ROW data at some point. It was certainly exciting for me to vote for the first time ever this year.
Great video Tom I always love your videos. Tom, just before SF1 you promised to give a shoutout to anyone that correctly predicted all 10 qualifiers in the comments section, when you did your SF1 reaction video but you seem to have forgotten so I wanted to remind you about it. I was one of the people that predicted all 10 qualifiers correctly ❤
I was very surprised as you were, Tom, that Malta finished so far down. They got 20 votes from me because I knew they had an uphill battle. I agree with your assessment that the running order caused them to be completely overshadowed by the "fun" songs of the 2nd half. The Busker are super talented and great fun and I look forward to hearing more music from them in the future.
This is so interesting! I'm still thinking about the differences and similarities between the semi-finals and the final, and what drives the wider audience to vote. Because, truly, these days there are mostly no bad songs, but so many factors determine what make people want to pick up the phone aside from the performance. Running order, mood, tone, and personal taste, diaspora and/or political vote as well as the fact that some songs need more or less time to sink in properly. I basically just want them all to win and for a diversity of entries to keep being submitted to the competition! Big up all of the benefits of participation without necessarily coming first
About Azerbaijan giving 6 points to Latvia, they're the only two countries in semi 1 that used to be part of the Soviet Union, maybe that's the reason? Latvia was also the country who gave the most points to Azerbaijan. Edit: nevermind, forgot Moldova arrgh!
Norway 1st in RO and getting 6th with televoting in SF1 while in the final Norway was 20th in RO and got 3rd in the televote. Also interesting that Croatia got 8th in SF1 televote and then 7th in the final (5th overall out of the SF1 qualifiers). Also just to further show how much better SF1 was than SF2, out of the Top 10 in the televote during the grand final, 6 of them were from SF1, 2 were AQ and 2 were from SF2. Infact, Poland was the highest televote scorer from SF2 with 81 televote points, so no qualifier from SF2 got above 100 points in the televote, whereas 5 qualifiers from SF1 got over 100 in the televote.
I hope Azerbaijan won’t be discouraged by their results and will continue sending homegrown, original acts. Turan and Tural were in my personal top 3 so it’s sad to see them this low, even if it was predictable.
What I fear is for them to take this as evidence for homegrown being a bad thing in general, instead of just this specific homegrown entry not being good enough in the context of this specific year.
Hello from Brazil, Tom. I was not ready to participate in Eurovision's discussion yet, but then you mentioned the Brazilian voting and I could not resist 😅. First of all, let me thank you for all the amazing content you keep providing us with. I learnt a lot from your videos and the content found in this channel made the ESC experience way better. I’m a total newbie, as I entered the world of Eurovision just this year, after my wife showed me Will Ferrell's movie back in January. Since then, we have both been hooked. Second, the voting. Yes, we did vote for Portugal at least once iirc, but the majority of votes we gave here at home were for Alessandra (2 from me and 1 from my wife - mind you, it is VERY expensive for us to vote in Euro because of the exchange rate and credit card international taxes…). Other acts we gave a single family vote for were Remo’s, Croatia’s and Vesna’s. This voting does not translate necessarily to what we enjoyed more, just the ones we thought might be in need for our votes. (If I were to detail, Alessandra was my overall favourite, with Austria a close second, and then others like Cha Cha Cha and Let 3; My wife’s preferred ones were Gustaph, Remo, Austria and then, in the final, Marco - I wonder why on this case… 😊. She also liked Loreen, to be fair.) So, as you can imagine, my money meant absolutely nothing in Semi-1 for Norway. This data makes me a bit frustrated lol. Do you know the number of votes needed to account for one point? I’m super curious now. Cheers and have a very good one! Also, keep these coming. You got yourself a follower. All the best, Fabio from Brazil (the nick in the account is because it is a very old gmail account). P.S. I was going to rant a bit over the Tweet that you posted about Alessandra’s final jury session, but, since I’m here, I’ll simply post my thoughts now. After reading it (the Tweet), I thought it could have been the reason for such a low score, but then I searched for videos plus other evidence and: 1. The whistle note was pretty much almost as good as it was in the final’s, so it could not have been the reason; 2. One of the videos shows one bit of a fumble in the “forged in flames” sentence, but it was a bit weird in which it could be some cruel editing from the poster to just cause a fuss (it is too weird and out of place). Even so, that is too minor of a mistake that would not justify the abysmal score. I would really like that you could somehow take a new look or investigate as to what was the reason she scored so low with the jury. I have many thoughts, but I’d love to hear more from you. Maybe a new video. 😉
I voted from Mexico, and I was relieved that I was not charged any international credit-card taxes nor any form of bank fee. It was just the 0.99 € per vote (well, about 18-19 Mexican pesos in my case). Because of that, I gladly got wild and gave all the votes I could, and even voted twice with two cards in the final 😂. I guess it varies greatly from country to country. Still, I hope they consider lowering the price for the ROTW audience so that even more people can take part!
I think it’s pretty clear that televote, while not perfect, most accurately reflected the 10 songs that deserved to go through in each semi. I voted in the semi and the final this year. I won’t waste my money on the final next year.
Funny thing is, I only voted in finals and I really believe my votes got Czechia into top 10. That is a really nice feeling, but I do understand the frustration about who won and who did not...
So with the ROTW I think it's a mix of diasporas and probably hardcore Eurofans from outside of voting countries and the latter might be the reason for Latvia getting 8 points. I'm extremely interested in Israel's 12 points from rotw. I'm a Jewish American and even I knew of Noa (never listened to her music) before she was announced to be in Eurovision and there are lots of Jewish people here that enjoy Israeli music in general. Plus there are just as many if not more Jews here than there are in Israel (though I doubt every single one watches Eurovision lol). Also I think she's probably huge in East Asia and South America so there's that.
@@ESCTom I think you're closer to the answer (entertaining). USA is the only 1 country in what is probably 30+ voting, and it has the largest Jewish percentage of Jews (1.9%) of any outside of the Eurovision zone. So unless you make the argument that a dissproportinate amount of Jews watch Eurovision outside of Europe it ca't be Diaspora voting because the numbers of each country before averaged would be overwhelmed by the non-Jewish population votes.
Well definitely it was the stronger semi final seeing the results in the final. Surprised about Malta being last but probably a lot of people liked it but not enough to vote for it. ❤
Yeah, I'm surprised about Malta being last too, I'd have expected that to be Ireland (sorry Tom!), with that lacklustre performance, as it was simply the one least predicted to qualify...
No chance that RTÉ could get you onto their Eurovision panel, Tom, and get the national song contest off the bloody Late Late Show?! I don’t know why established Irish artists won’t apply. Have they not seen the success that Måneskin, Duncan Lawrence, Rosa Linn or Sam Ryder have had?!
After SF1 i was very happy in one hand,but a little bit unhappy in other hand. My country finally passed in the finals (Croatia🇭🇷) after 2017 and it's the most important. But i was sad about Latvia🇱🇻 because they were so close. And after Serbia's🇷🇸 performance i was quite sure that Luke sneaked into finals as 10th. For me,he was much better in Serbian National final and practically Croatian points saved him and sent Latvia🇱🇻 home. I was hoping that both Serbia🇷🇸 and Latvia 🇱🇻 gonna be Q but that didn't happen. A little surprise is "only" 6th place for Norway🇳🇴 and Czechia's 🇨🇿high 4th. But girls from Vesna were amazing. Switzerland🇨🇭 Q easier that i thought. I was quite sure that Remo is gonna Q, but probably as 9th or 10th. And i think that Malta🇲🇹 definitely didn't deserve last place.😢
Tom, you deserve more visibility for your content in the fandom for sure! I don't know anybody with such high quality analysis and production effort while filming with literal laundry drying in the background😄 Me and my mom lerned to point out which youtube person we were talking about by asking "Is it the guy with the shelf/cupboard behind him?"
Two interesting things I noticed across the two semis was that every non-English song qualified (except Romania) and that there was a qualifier from every spot in the running order (except for the 12th spot sorry Azerbaijan and San Marino).
I think I need to stop watching ESC related videos from this year Tom, coz each time I see Finland being the most popular it just makes me feel even sadder 😂 On a non personal note, how about if they persist with televote only in the semis they go back to completely random running order? 😉
As a change to the points system, I think if the public could give points to their top 20 instead of top 10, it would fix two things - 1. there would be more power to the public over the jury (which we really need based on what happened this year) 2. There would be more points to give, so you won't have a situation like only 3 for Malta (or 0 for Romania and San Marino)
I kinda wanna know the rotw by country tbh i think itd be so interesting!!! I couldnt get semi voting to work for some reason but from 🇺🇸 i would have voted Latvia mainly since i really wanted them to qualify and then Finland as well. (I was able to vote in grand final though!)
Hm I really don't get why Malta wound up last there. I really liked this one. Was it the imitation of the crazy sax guy? I did put this song on my playlist btw, i would have voted for it if Finland would not have been in this Semifinal.
An invalid televote is replaced with an aggregated vote first, not the jury. If they can't calculate an aggregated result for your country, THEN your country will use jurors. Keep this in mind for the SF2 video and San Marino
from what I read on the Eurovision website: "What are the circumstances in which a Jury vote will be used in the Semi-Finals? The Jury vote of a participating country will only be counted in the Semi-Finals should a valid televote not be recorded in that country" "What happens if there is neither a valid televote or jury vote from a participating country? If there is not a valid televote or Jury vote in any participating country then a result based on the votes from countries with similar voting records will be used. " From what I understand, the aggregated result is a last resort when nothing else is available. But let me know if Ive misunderstood this or you have any other sources, cos I obviously want to be giving out the correct information Thanks
Trying to cope with PED by numbers... I discovered your channel thanks to Matt from ESCUnited (yeah that one !) a few days ago. Great work, keep it up 🤘
Malta is a combination of things; small country struggling with televote, running order with Finland being the more 'fun' entry as you said but also the performance looked very chaotic and messy on tv.
Could you also make a video like the one you're planning on doing with Ireland, but just with Denmark instead? Like, go into why Denmark has been placed so low in recent years, and possibly go into how DMGP differentiates from NMGP and Melodifestivalen. I would really love for Denmark to do well, and you would also think that they would do so, because DR is quite a big broadcaster with a lot of money. But they just don't sadly. Anyway love your vids :-)
Hey yea I can see what I can do. It depends whether I’ll be able to do some research or not. The reason I know so much about the Irish system is because any source material is in English. But i can look into it
Interesting comment Emma, I disagree as I thought the Irish entry was good but not a winner. I'm keen to learn why you believe its a nil pointer and I can see that the Eurovision public voters agree with you...... I'm keen to know why?
@@patrickfarrell9230 As you like the song, I'm gonna try to not be too harsh but... Ireland was my last place as well because the song sounds to me incredibly bland, it's been done before but better. On top of that, you can't feel any authenticity, or anything genuine behind this entry. The lyrics are as generic as it gets and it really strengthens that feeling of being absolutely bland. And the climax was hardly one, falling flat when it's supposed to be anthemic. It just felt like a Eurovision bait song, but those songs don't do as well anymore and on top of that, the attempt was very very poor. Sorry if I've been harsh, but just my feelings and most Eurofans's feelings about it. We told Irish people that this song was a guaranteed non qualifier for months now.
@@maja-tea Thank you for your comment Maja and dont feel bad for expressing your view. We both agree that the performane was total rubbish. We only got 10 points so something is radically wrong. Maybe I'm old school but I cannot get my head around why a bunch of old farts in underpants can qualify for the grand final and I'm looking forward to Toms analyses of the Irish entry later.
For the problem of being drawn in the first half, I wonder if a longer recap of the song during the "vote now" phase could be made to offset it? Something along the lines of (and I'm sure that the numbers could be properly figured out, this is just off the top of my head) the first song gets a 20% longer recap than the last song and it's a sliding scale down the running order getting to "0% longer" recap for the last 3 or 4 songs or something. (edit - spelling)
I’m starting to think that jury-only semifinals BUT televote-only finals would solve a lot of problems. You have to bring some quality/seriousness to qualify, but the public has the ultimate decision on the winner and grand final results.
I do find your analysis Super insightful. I've Been obsessed with voting data since the Finals, and I've Been thinking about revamping the televotes System entirely. What are your Thoughts on how we could Improve the televotes System? Maybe if we could Force people to vote for their top 3 countries, instead of choosing on how they are going to cast their votes? The running System seems to make the best songs of their genre (this Year Finland and Sweden) Huge vote vacuums that Force all other countries to Battle for just their few points
11:46 Regarding the Czech televote, let's not forget that our viewership is rather abysmal, which likely results in our tele being weird. In the semis, israel won because i assume only the yass-type of people (not an insult) even watch them, and in the finale Ukraine probably won because of the diaspora being able to overvote the abysmal czech vote. No clue why our jury gave Ukraine 12 however, that was rather unexpected (although if you watch melfest you know that the czech jury is bonkers hah)
I also feel like countries not qualifying is getting more devastating because i like more of the songs. Maybe it's me paying more attention to the semis but I feel the quality is going up. I'm sad about latvia but then if they beat Serbia to get in I'd also hate that. Someone has to not qualify
Also the viewing figures released are alarming and hope you're doing a video. Italy -68% for the Semi's. Estonia similar story. I hope they don't withdraw with only 150k watching. Spain down almost a third.
Which hotel did you stay at Tom with Moldova? I have since discovered that the guy I was talking to from the Belgium delegation outside my hotel (Radisson Blu) was Gustaph's husband!! He never let on who he was :) I also bumped into Conchita coming out of Semi #2 :P Great video as usual.
I was in the Ibis, where Moldova and Slovenia were both staying. Haha I didnt bump into any big stars on the street. Ive made a promise to myself next time, that im going to organise things better and spend more time around the city
I think there may be a Few Countrys that used their Jury in SF2. (Other than San Marino) Also Ireland are often Robbed Maps is a Song i listen to almost Daily.
I have set "Dance (our own party) to be my ringtone as a revenge to one of my colleagues and everyone else around me who thought it was boring. I totally love it, and they will have to get used to it, so it can grow on them!
When it was announced that the semis would be only televote, I predicted that no country will finish with less than 20 points in the final. In the end, the last place got 18 points, so I wasn't too far off. And the only country under 20 p. was a Big5 country.
I'm not the least bit surprised of Latvia and Azerbaijan having a connection in Eurovision, because they were the two countries I voted for in the first semifinal. Am I the missing link? 🤔 No, really, the first semi was pretty pop heavy, and the more alternative songs were Latvia, Azerbaijan, and Serbia, and maybe Finland. It tends to be that countries who send something other than pop, also vote for other less pop songs. I don't fully know how the jury votes are determined, but I think some more transparency might be necessary about how the juries are selected, etc. I don't know if a jury could have saved all the songs I wanted to qualify from the semifinals, because there were too many good songs. It sucks we need to leave anyone outside of the final, but it is what it is. I do prefer the current system over the earlier systems, because at least everyone gets to sing once each year. Since you're in Istanbul, how about you urge them to return to Eurovision? Turkey always had amazing songs, and I really miss them.
I think that Malta flopped because if you wanted to vote for a fun song, there were much, much better ones in this semi final. I think it lacked a point of view or something that would make it stand out - in my opinion it was quite generic and childish. I feel better in my sweater?? :/
Cary UK: 00:23 20/05/23 - It's just come to me in an epiphany...how to solve the issue of jury final and running order bias....broadcast the jury final show an hour or so behind, then show the songs in a random order to the national juries!!!....Eurovision-shire, you're welcome :-)
How different the televotes of the Big 3 are makes me wonder why? Could it be that some of the smaller countries' televote scores were actually jury votes, hence favoring the favorites? Or is it because the Big 3 are less susceptible to block/neighbor voting? Or is it because the voters of the Big 3 include more varied casual voters while smaller countries primarily have fans voting in the semi's?
the only obsessive thought about the semi 1 that I have is that my top-2 songs were fighting for the last spot in the final 😭my thoughts on that (I'm trying to be objective keep in mind they're still my winner and runner-up): - 🇷🇸 got lucky with countries in the semi - the highest points came from 🇨🇭 and 🇭🇷 - if the juries were present in the semi I'm 100% sure 🇱🇻 could've made it instead of 🇷🇸. also 🇳🇱 could've been jury q - let's compare final results with semi results. there's a HUGE gap between 9th and 10th place in the semi 1, 🇷🇸 got twice less points than 🇵🇹. the 3rd slot in the running order is the worst slot to qualify BUT I believe that if the song is liked by (in this case) the televote then it will qualify no matter what slot it is. with that in mind I just wanna say but unfortunately the general public didn't get 🇷🇸 's song. some people say that the live performance wasn't THAT but we've seen many "disappointing" live performances that scored good with the public - looking at the final results - the 5th slot has one of the best televoting results from 2017 to 2022. it's hard to judge 'cause cha cha cha took all of the "alternative" songs points but I don't think that smss was the victim of the running order. it's the song that didn't grab televoters' attention and these things happen 😭 also some people say the live performance in the final was weaker compared to semi final - the sound wasn't good on tv and the nerves took over that's why the delivery might've fallen flat. I'm very sad to say it 'cause it's one of my favorite songs performed on eurovision stage EVER - as for 🇲🇹 which was "a very televote friendly" song and was performed before 🇷🇸, they never scored high numbers with televote before ("no voting power") and the death slot played its role me thinks
I dumped so many votes into Latvia, and hey, ROW did give them 8 points. Would have been soulcrushing had we done it and Luke Black been punted out as a result however
Also I wouldn't be surprised if most of the ROW voters were from South American countries, in the final Spain got points from ROW and Portugal and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the spanish speakers were voting for Spain (or they're eurovision fans who like the fan favourite songs).
Btw are the backup Jury results ever going to be released? I feel like Latvia and Iceland would’ve qualified with the juries instead of Serbia and Albania 🙃
Not sure if more recaps is the solution, but I wonder if a recap after the first half (or even possibly after the first third for the final) would alleviate some of the running order issues?
Could also who you have in your semi play a part in the some countries struggle to qualify? I know I couldn’t vote for Malta 🇲🇹 this year and Latvia 🇱🇻 last year because they were in opposite semi final from my country of Australia 🇦🇺 so couldn’t vote them.
i really hope so. I want Latvia to get some luck too. Two years in a row in the harder semi with 1st half draw. At least Georgia had a great draw this year
I actually predicted Malta being last. I thought the song was a little basic, and the staging was very after school special and a bit cringe. Much like Latvia 2022, and even Czechia 2019
Anybody knows what's the thing between Portugal and Sweden? In 2001, 2013 and 2016 Portugal did not enter to the contest when Sweden hosted. Or is this just a coincidence? Anyway kind of interesting. Hope it's not the case next year.
@@ESCTom in 2000 (when Sweden hosted, not 2001) they failed to qualify for the show due to track record. that was one of the elimination systems used before the semi final was introduced in 2004.
Financial reasons back in 2013, reformulating the national final in 2016, which worked because we won in 2017. Portugal doesn't have any reasons to withdraw next year, this qualifying streak is encouraging us to keep on sending good entries and the interest in the show is growing rapidly (both SF1 and GF were leaders by audience). Pretty sure we'll be back next year in Sweden!
It wud be nice to know what kindoff juries was there... from what backgrouds they have?... Example what i saw about that "big 5" that mostly they all gave 🇸🇪12 points and 🇫🇮0. To me thats weard.. of course there was other countries allso doing 12-0... 😔 Anyway keep up good work... Not so long to next ESC 😂
I think main reason for Tattoo consistently gathering more points, is that the areas it's excels at are easier to measure objectively, for a professional. There's a clearer formula to follow to check if the boxes are ticked and in Loreen's case they are. Where as with Käärijä's performance, it's bit more unconventional, so it comes down more to whether or not you connect with, what putting out, so it's more subjective and thus also gets a more uneven (and a bit more luck based) result.
Sweden over the last 5 years vs Norway Sweden juryvote 1138 Sweden televote 603 Jury advantage 107 points per year Norway juryvote 203 Norway televote 797 Jury disadvantage 119 points per year Finland got robbed. But don't hate Loreen it's not her fault
I thought the busker was utterly forgettable tbh. It's like something you'd hear on Grafton street of a Sunday afternoon and you wouldn't stop to listen either. La Venda had the same "random dude grabbing a mike at the party" vibe and went the same way. Not surprised at all at the results. Rest of the world is going to be mostly America but I just wondered if it also included Belarus and russia. Which wouldn't be ethical towards Ukraine but wouldn't surprise me either, that they were let vote on the sly. Also nice to see France and Italy can still recognise songs with merit and vote accordingly
If any countries are going to benefit from the rest of the world vote via diaspora/heritage , it would surely be Israel, Armenia, Spain, and Portugal. Every country has some diaspora, but those would be the most plugged in, so to speak, or the most culturally connected two large populations abroad. We shall see how much that plays out in the future, but it is something to look out for.
With this second place for Loreen, Alexander Rybak is still the only person to win 2 Eurovision Semi-Finals. Although he didn‘t won the Televote in that Semi.
In the Netherlands there have been loads of comments indeed clamouring for the return of a national final; however, more recently I have seen more and more people stepping up commenting that it would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We've been doing sooooo much better with internal selections, the quality of our entries has improved so much and actual good musicians have been so much more invested in Eurovision. Our national finals, especially during our "dark years", were totally sh*t and national embarassments. And I think the whole idea that this should be some kind of democratic process is just not right. Sure, things should have gone differently this year. The broadcaster probably shouldn't have thought "oh, it's a depressing song written by Duncan so this will work out fine", while forgetting that Duncan doesn't have the experience needed to do for Mia & Dion what Ilse did for him. So yes the whole procedure could use some freshening up and yes it would be great to have a song representing us that isn't about sadness and depression. Regarding the others: I was especially sad for Latvia, this was an excellent entry and a gorgeous performance which really deserved to qualify. I hope the Latvians do see the outpouring of support they've been getting to keep up the good work for next year, and fingers crossed they'll have a better draw next year in the weaker semi. The rest of the world has pretty good taste; they also gave Spain points in the final. Probably Latin America? Indeed it would be fascinating to see where these votes came from. I voted for Portugal and Latvia, so I'm happy my votes actually resulted in points for them 🙂
I think Malta didn’t qualify because this song isn’t risky enough, if it makes sense. It’s likable by many but pretty average. So if you only vote for 1-2 countries it’s not on your list of votes. It’s just somewhere there in the middle. If there was jury maybe they would qualify, because 10 countries basically get voted with jury. I’m kinda happy my country (Israel) gave them 2 points out of those 3. We usually appreciate fun in here 🎉❤
@@seansean8980 haha I had no idea what they were saying. Malta had a great performance, but repeating "Do you wanna dance?" over and over gets old. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
100% Latvia would’ve qualify if juries would’ve been able to vote in this semifinal. Serbia and Croatia wouldn’t been top 10 jury in semifinal. They scored low in final.
For me the busker was too serious for the viewers and the lead singer was not charismatic enough, i think it would have done really good with the jurys since it was serious and quality.
The result for The Netherlands in the semi final is the worst result pointswise in the history of the ESC since the semifinals were introduced. Maybe due to the strong opposition, but I believe mainly due to the (worldwide?) criticism. Would love to see my country send an upbeat Dutch spoken song, for instance by Maan & Goldband. Their song "stiekem" just became the best Dutch spoken song in the history of the Dutch Top 40.
I'm not sure about malta, personally I heard from everybody about how good the song was and it has never connected with me in the slightest. From minute one it fell to me like a very artificial and forced version of ' look how fun and cool we are' and the chorus is extremely unsingable. It instantly gave me vibes of the band AJR, which I also happened to strongly dislike.. I'm not sure if any of that was true for other people in the televote, but it was the weakest song in this semi by a decent margin for me.
![เบิ้ล ปทุมราช - สาวสอง ( มีมี่ของอ้าย ) ft. ตาต้า,ต้องเต [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mqlMjnP08XI/mqdefault.jpg)
![ไปอยู่ไสมา - ช๊อปเปอร์ โตเกียวมิวสิค [ OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/sWuVNbRTJbc/mqdefault.jpg)
Fascinating. I hope the EBU releases the details of the Rest of World vote
Latvia was so close to qualifying, what a shame for Sudden Lights. It was one of my favourite Eurovision 2023 entries 🇱🇻
I think the Row giving a lot of points to Latvia is because of fandom popularity. As I think about 80% of row voters are Eurovision fans.
aw, azerbaijan voting for latvia is a delightful surprise. it's interesting to see the tastes of different countries, especially countries that export mostly pop music. i've seen that Turan and Tural's song is actually being received extremely positively with South Korean fans, which is sweet.
I can only think Malta was 'this is a fun song!' type song, but not a pick up your phone, i'm emotionally touched or excited by this song.
I gave 10 votes to Latvia, 5 to Portugal and 5 to Switzerland in SF1 from Canada/.Rest of World
This data suggests that Finnish televoters didn´t do any tactical voting in the Grand Final. Loreen did get only 5 points from Finland in this Semi-Final 1 which means that zero points from Finnish televoters in the Grand Final was in line with this result. My point is that there were absolutely no need for Finnish tactical voting in the Semi-Final 1 because it was obvious that Käärijä would go to the Grand Final and also that he would win the Semi-Final.
Yes, thank you! I think people need to understand that most casual voters are single vote only. They vote their personal favorite unlike megafans that reach the 20 votes per person allowed easily - or more seriously speaking just spread out their vote in general. I feel like this is lost on people arguing about the reasons or intentions for the result that shocked Finns themselves just as much as others. More fans watch the semifinals proportinally, when more casual viewers watch the grand final. If you end up at top three of enough people five points is pretty reasonable. This year Sweden simply wasn't the top choice for enough voters to end up in our overall top 10 in the grand final televote. People don't just vote for stuff they don't like, and I think it's pretty pretentious for some people to just expect Loreen to be the number one here, like we're just faking it to do better ourselves. In order to be true that would need to be true for each casual voter individually, which is dumb. It's the silliest controvercy of the year.
That being said, another thing that is missing from the conversation is that all Finns this year - as in the general public, even those usually indifferent about Eurovision - were aware of the never seen before situation we were in, the ultimate competition between us and Sweden, and of the fact that this is a now or never opportunity for us. Never before during the social media era have we even dreamed about winning. The general public still held the 90's talking point of Finland having zero chance - and even more so the 80's talking point of Finnish language song having such nonexistent chances of succeeding it's practically waste to participate. It doesn't need to be tactical, not to mention a nation wide conspiracy or ill intent against Sweden. The general overwhelming positivity for Käärijä genuinely shifted the focus elsewhere, Loreen wasn't the sort of Big Thing here this year in comparison to the crazy hype for Käärijä. Not even Lordi was this popular or universally liked among Finns.
@@AammaK I totally agree!
Ah, that's a good point. I believed that there was tactical voting going on in the final, but now I'm not sure. Because I just checked, and all the songs that Finland voted for in the final were either ahead of Sweden in semi 1, or came from semi 2.
Exactly! We Finns know it, that Loreen not getting any televote points from Finland wasn't due to tactical voting, so those suggestions by Swedes /Sweden are quite preposterous :(
@@AammaK I know what you mean, but I certainly hope this wasn't a "now or never opportunity for us", but that Finland is now a new Eurovision powerhouse - frankly the statistics of 2020's point that way, as someone calculated Finland is now the 4th most successful country by average placing in 2020's Eurovisions! And I hope next year we'll take sweet revenge and win the actual trophy too (even if we now did win people's hearts)!! :D
I only came to truly appreciate Latvia during the actual show. Looking at the results, I feel they should've been the 10th qualifiers, even though I liked Serbia's originality. I'm from Brazil and I wanted to vote but my card didn't allow me for some reason, but Finland, Portugal and (last minute) Latvia were my picks.
Honestly think Latvia just needs to keep doing them! Not helpful to go into 'what ifs' of course but I can't help but feel that just the little bit of luck to draw them into the second half or the second semi this year could well have seen them go through. Biggest wish for 2024 is Latvia and Georgia to get through! Such big NQ streaks aren't good for anyone :( Thanks Tom for yet another great video!
Yea they were very unlucky last year with their draw too. Also the harder semi and also 2nd in running order
I hope more countries go back to a national selection. There were dozens of great songs that we got to hear this year.
yea i have so many songs from National Selections still in my playlists
That depends how they are done. In Israel we had a system of selection via the so called "the next star" show. That format was very jury heavy and vocals heavy (essentially see who can sing covers better and if even one juror dislikes you're out)so yes they qualified and by sheer luck one of them actually won (only the artist was selected and the composer got creative), all the rest had relatively good with juries but flopped in televotes. Last year we had a wrong format that caused a non-qualifier so they played it safe this year with a committee.
@@shlomomarkman6374 Shlomo, that sounds very intense. More about finding an artist to represent, than finding the song. I prefer the standard nation final, like say Estonia or Portugal, where the songs are all presented and they compete to win. Still at least your system is a bit more open that say the UK where it is all a big secret now between the BBC and the record company they hired. 👍
@@alipanroosendaal9503 That's actually the format we had in the 80's and early 90's, where you pick the artist AND the song, and guess what, we were top 5 on nearly every year back then. Then they relapsed to "commitees" who secretly chose random unknown artists and guess what happened in the 2000's and early 2010's - we flopped BAD. Then we got to choose again with shows X factor style, and since 2015 we did well again! (Other than last year that is). Now we're back to those secret commitees again and yeah, Noa is a queen, but I'm not sure the other picks to follow are gonna play out like this...
@@alipanroosendaal9503 The truth is that Israelis mostly lost interest in the ESC since the golden days of the 80's and 90's and since it became a commitment of 3 shows, 40 countries, no neighbours or "blocks" on our side etc. So if not for a prime time show like X factor, no one would care about a national selection and it would have about 0% rating.
21:00 I expected Israel to get those rotw points from the middle east especially from Turkey. Unicorn was a huge hit there.
I'm happy Latvia got 8 points but I think the rotw voters are almost all just eurofans, and eurofans wanted Latvia in (some voting for Latvia instead of their sure qualifier favs just for this semi), which makes sense - rotw viewers are less likely to be random viewers. It's like eurofans had a better say on rotw than the eurofans who are voting from a participating country since they are outnumbered by casual viewers.
I’m also curious if there were a lot of Russians voting too, that kind of high end production I imagine is something they’d go for
Latvia was SO close to qualifying! But also, I'm not sure I could have handled a result where Serbia didn't qualify. haha. I'm surprised Norway didn't do better but it might have been a combination of being so early in the show and people thinking she'll be fine so I'll vote for something else.
Songs that do well with bookies should get the death slots. E.g. Loreen should have performed second in the first semis.
I understand why you say that, but the producers need to make the show as entertaining as possible, so they want to keep the big attractions for the key part of the show
Do not agree. Sure a bookies favourite like Sweden and Finland would survive any slot. But it is not fair to give the favourite a disadvantage just because they are favourites. Also Finland would need the second worst slot then. It is a strange system, it is like handicap in golf and that really is not used professionally. The slots are one of the problems with the televotes. There are many.
I think the best way would just be random order. But that of couse could backfire if there were too many similar songs.
I would imagine that the 6 points from Azerbaijan to latvia is related to the fact that Latvia and Moldova were the only other former USSR countries in the Semi Final. It's interesting because the former USSR voting block was so powerful in past contests, but ever since the exclusion of Russia and Belarus, it doesn't get very much attention anymore, but we definitely still shouldn't ignore its impact on the results.
On a different note, I'm so sad for Malta. I voted for them 5 times and really hoped they would qualify, only for them to come last. TVM have confirmed that they will conduct a Maltese songwriting camp for the 2024 preselection in the hopes of encouraging more homegrown entries, so here's hoping that pays off. In general though I think it was just the running order that killed them. We saw Norway, Malta and Serbia underperform in the semi final as a result of their televote, especially Norway which came 3rd in the final but only 6th in the semi. If the EBU decides to keep the semi finals as televote only, something really should be done to combat this. Maybe a recap of the first half of songs half way through the running order would help?
As for Ireland, I am actually delighted that we did not qualify. That song and performance represented everything that is wrong with the Irish delegation, an outdated, generic, commercially produced pop song about unity. It is like they looked at Russia's formula for success in 2013-2015 and decided to copy that, despite it being 10 years later. I really don't like Micheal Healy's attitude to the contest in general, for example when he blamed Brooke not qualifying on corrupt juries, despite the fact we didn't even place top 10 with the televote. I am sure he's a lovely man but at what point do you take a step back and say 'okay I am not right for this job'. Under his tenure as head of delegations we have achieved 8 non-qualifications and 2 qualifications (ranking 26th and 16th). The Late Late Show selection along with Michael Healy needs to be dumped in exchange for either a dedicated national final framed as a celebration and promotion of Irish music, which can maybe be partnered with a local city council in order to divert some costs such as 'Galway Fest' or 'Fleá Phoirt Lairge' or something. Or go back to internal selection and sponsor an Irish songwriting camp, such as used in Austria and Norway, or partner with a record label like the UK and Cyprus does. As the country with the highest GDP per capita, second to Luxembourg, we really have no excuse for being unable to produce a decent national final on the scale of much smaller countries like Estonia, Iceland, Malta, Latvia, Croatia and Albania. Anyways, rant over.
As always keep up the brilliant content Tom!!!
Really appreciate this analysis Tom! Absolutely gutted to see that Latvia just missed out on qualifying. Fingers crossed that EBU releases ROW data at some point. It was certainly exciting for me to vote for the first time ever this year.
yea the ROW vote was very clever. Extra income while also engaging more people outside Europe
I love your videos, Tom. amazing stuff! And Latvia was our household's and lots of other's favourite this year, I hope they realise that!
Thank you so much 🙏🏻
Great video Tom I always love your videos.
Tom, just before SF1 you promised to give a shoutout to anyone that correctly predicted all 10 qualifiers in the comments section, when you did your SF1 reaction video but you seem to have forgotten so I wanted to remind you about it.
I was one of the people that predicted all 10 qualifiers correctly ❤
I was very surprised as you were, Tom, that Malta finished so far down. They got 20 votes from me because I knew they had an uphill battle. I agree with your assessment that the running order caused them to be completely overshadowed by the "fun" songs of the 2nd half. The Busker are super talented and great fun and I look forward to hearing more music from them in the future.
This is so interesting!
I'm still thinking about the differences and similarities between the semi-finals and the final, and what drives the wider audience to vote. Because, truly, these days there are mostly no bad songs, but so many factors determine what make people want to pick up the phone aside from the performance. Running order, mood, tone, and personal taste, diaspora and/or political vote as well as the fact that some songs need more or less time to sink in properly. I basically just want them all to win and for a diversity of entries to keep being submitted to the competition! Big up all of the benefits of participation without necessarily coming first
Loved it Tom! You're amazing.
Thank you Carla 🥰
About Azerbaijan giving 6 points to Latvia, they're the only two countries in semi 1 that used to be part of the Soviet Union, maybe that's the reason? Latvia was also the country who gave the most points to Azerbaijan.
Edit: nevermind, forgot Moldova arrgh!
Norway 1st in RO and getting 6th with televoting in SF1 while in the final Norway was 20th in RO and got 3rd in the televote.
Also interesting that Croatia got 8th in SF1 televote and then 7th in the final (5th overall out of the SF1 qualifiers).
Also just to further show how much better SF1 was than SF2, out of the Top 10 in the televote during the grand final, 6 of them were from SF1, 2 were AQ and 2 were from SF2. Infact, Poland was the highest televote scorer from SF2 with 81 televote points, so no qualifier from SF2 got above 100 points in the televote, whereas 5 qualifiers from SF1 got over 100 in the televote.
Thank you Tom! The detail and intricacy of your analyses is mind boggling... Can't imagine how you do it 😮
Thank you Patrick 🥰
@@ESCTom ❣️
I hope Azerbaijan won’t be discouraged by their results and will continue sending homegrown, original acts. Turan and Tural were in my personal top 3 so it’s sad to see them this low, even if it was predictable.
What I fear is for them to take this as evidence for homegrown being a bad thing in general, instead of just this specific homegrown entry not being good enough in the context of this specific year.
Hello from Brazil, Tom. I was not ready to participate in Eurovision's discussion yet, but then you mentioned the Brazilian voting and I could not resist 😅.
First of all, let me thank you for all the amazing content you keep providing us with. I learnt a lot from your videos and the content found in this channel made the ESC experience way better. I’m a total newbie, as I entered the world of Eurovision just this year, after my wife showed me Will Ferrell's movie back in January. Since then, we have both been hooked.
Second, the voting. Yes, we did vote for Portugal at least once iirc, but the majority of votes we gave here at home were for Alessandra (2 from me and 1 from my wife - mind you, it is VERY expensive for us to vote in Euro because of the exchange rate and credit card international taxes…). Other acts we gave a single family vote for were Remo’s, Croatia’s and Vesna’s. This voting does not translate necessarily to what we enjoyed more, just the ones we thought might be in need for our votes. (If I were to detail, Alessandra was my overall favourite, with Austria a close second, and then others like Cha Cha Cha and Let 3; My wife’s preferred ones were Gustaph, Remo, Austria and then, in the final, Marco - I wonder why on this case… 😊. She also liked Loreen, to be fair.)
So, as you can imagine, my money meant absolutely nothing in Semi-1 for Norway. This data makes me a bit frustrated lol.
Do you know the number of votes needed to account for one point? I’m super curious now.
Cheers and have a very good one! Also, keep these coming. You got yourself a follower.
All the best, Fabio from Brazil (the nick in the account is because it is a very old gmail account).
P.S. I was going to rant a bit over the Tweet that you posted about Alessandra’s final jury session, but, since I’m here, I’ll simply post my thoughts now. After reading it (the Tweet), I thought it could have been the reason for such a low score, but then I searched for videos plus other evidence and: 1. The whistle note was pretty much almost as good as it was in the final’s, so it could not have been the reason; 2. One of the videos shows one bit of a fumble in the “forged in flames” sentence, but it was a bit weird in which it could be some cruel editing from the poster to just cause a fuss (it is too weird and out of place). Even so, that is too minor of a mistake that would not justify the abysmal score. I would really like that you could somehow take a new look or investigate as to what was the reason she scored so low with the jury. I have many thoughts, but I’d love to hear more from you. Maybe a new video. 😉
Welcome to the world of Eurovision! My wife also got me into it 😂
I voted from Mexico, and I was relieved that I was not charged any international credit-card taxes nor any form of bank fee. It was just the 0.99 € per vote (well, about 18-19 Mexican pesos in my case).
Because of that, I gladly got wild and gave all the votes I could, and even voted twice with two cards in the final 😂. I guess it varies greatly from country to country.
Still, I hope they consider lowering the price for the ROTW audience so that even more people can take part!
Obrigada Fábio por teres votado em Portugal. 💃
@@carlarodrigues3784 Foi um prazer votar na Mimicat, Carla! A gente torceu demais por ela. O melhor vocal da semi-1, em minha modesta opinião. :)
@@JJSFC Thanks, it feels good to feel part of this huge family! 😄
If only there was televote only in the Final as well...!! 😪 Then we'd have a deserving winner, the same as in this semi, instead of what we now have.
I think it’s pretty clear that televote, while not perfect, most accurately reflected the 10 songs that deserved to go through in each semi. I voted in the semi and the final this year. I won’t waste my money on the final next year.
Funny thing is, I only voted in finals and I really believe my votes got Czechia into top 10. That is a really nice feeling, but I do understand the frustration about who won and who did not...
So with the ROTW I think it's a mix of diasporas and probably hardcore Eurofans from outside of voting countries and the latter might be the reason for Latvia getting 8 points.
I'm extremely interested in Israel's 12 points from rotw. I'm a Jewish American and even I knew of Noa (never listened to her music) before she was announced to be in Eurovision and there are lots of Jewish people here that enjoy Israeli music in general. Plus there are just as many if not more Jews here than there are in Israel (though I doubt every single one watches Eurovision lol). Also I think she's probably huge in East Asia and South America so there's that.
i think its probably all those things that you said, and then on top of it, just the fact that it was a very entertaining show too, to top it off.
@@ESCTom I think you're closer to the answer (entertaining). USA is the only 1 country in what is probably 30+ voting, and it has the largest Jewish percentage of Jews (1.9%) of any outside of the Eurovision zone. So unless you make the argument that a dissproportinate amount of Jews watch Eurovision outside of Europe it ca't be Diaspora voting because the numbers of each country before averaged would be overwhelmed by the non-Jewish population votes.
Or maybe she just did a good performance and had a good song, making people vote for her🤯
@@oOOOo33-q5q why is it so angering for some people when results are explained and speculated?
@@AammaK Ikr.
Well definitely it was the stronger semi final seeing the results in the final. Surprised about Malta being last but probably a lot of people liked it but not enough to vote for it. ❤
Yeah, I'm surprised about Malta being last too, I'd have expected that to be Ireland (sorry Tom!), with that lacklustre performance, as it was simply the one least predicted to qualify...
No chance that RTÉ could get you onto their Eurovision panel, Tom, and get the national song contest off the bloody Late Late Show?!
I don’t know why established Irish artists won’t apply. Have they not seen the success that Måneskin, Duncan Lawrence, Rosa Linn or Sam Ryder have had?!
After SF1 i was very happy in one hand,but a little bit unhappy in other hand. My country finally passed in the finals (Croatia🇭🇷) after 2017 and it's the most important. But i was sad about Latvia🇱🇻 because they were so close. And after Serbia's🇷🇸 performance i was quite sure that Luke sneaked into finals as 10th. For me,he was much better in Serbian National final and practically Croatian points saved him and sent Latvia🇱🇻 home. I was hoping that both Serbia🇷🇸 and Latvia 🇱🇻 gonna be Q but that didn't happen. A little surprise is "only" 6th place for Norway🇳🇴 and Czechia's 🇨🇿high 4th. But girls from Vesna were amazing. Switzerland🇨🇭 Q easier that i thought. I was quite sure that Remo is gonna Q, but probably as 9th or 10th. And i think that Malta🇲🇹 definitely didn't deserve last place.😢
Tom, you deserve more visibility for your content in the fandom for sure! I don't know anybody with such high quality analysis and production effort while filming with literal laundry drying in the background😄 Me and my mom lerned to point out which youtube person we were talking about by asking "Is it the guy with the shelf/cupboard behind him?"
Loooool yea I should have moved the laundry but the studio is so small, it would be in the frame regardless of where I put it 😂
@@ESCTom that's completely fine😄❤
Two interesting things I noticed across the two semis was that every non-English song qualified (except Romania) and that there was a qualifier from every spot in the running order (except for the 12th spot sorry Azerbaijan and San Marino).
YEs, i noticed the non english thing too, that was awesome!
You are my absolute favourite Eurovision commentator. Rolled over on my bed and squashed your glasses. ha ha ha. Please keep up all this good work.
😂
Great analysis Tom! Looking forward to hearing what ur doing in Istanbul :)
I miss Eurovision :( thanks for keeping the memories alive
I think I need to stop watching ESC related videos from this year Tom, coz each time I see Finland being the most popular it just makes me feel even sadder 😂 On a non personal note, how about if they persist with televote only in the semis they go back to completely random running order? 😉
As a change to the points system, I think if the public could give points to their top 20 instead of top 10, it would fix two things -
1. there would be more power to the public over the jury (which we really need based on what happened this year)
2. There would be more points to give, so you won't have a situation like only 3 for Malta (or 0 for Romania and San Marino)
1-18,20,22 points? I think France would be 7th or 8th in this system.
I kinda wanna know the rotw by country tbh i think itd be so interesting!!! I couldnt get semi voting to work for some reason but from 🇺🇸 i would have voted Latvia mainly since i really wanted them to qualify and then Finland as well. (I was able to vote in grand final though!)
Hm I really don't get why Malta wound up last there. I really liked this one. Was it the imitation of the crazy sax guy? I did put this song on my playlist btw, i would have voted for it if Finland would not have been in this Semifinal.
An invalid televote is replaced with an aggregated vote first, not the jury. If they can't calculate an aggregated result for your country, THEN your country will use jurors. Keep this in mind for the SF2 video and San Marino
from what I read on the Eurovision website:
"What are the circumstances in which a Jury vote will be used in the Semi-Finals?
The Jury vote of a participating country will only be counted in the Semi-Finals should a valid televote not be recorded in that country"
"What happens if there is neither a valid televote or jury vote from a participating country?
If there is not a valid televote or Jury vote in any participating country then a result based on the votes from countries with similar voting records will be used. "
From what I understand, the aggregated result is a last resort when nothing else is available. But let me know if Ive misunderstood this or you have any other sources, cos I obviously want to be giving out the correct information
Thanks
Looking forward to that Irish video!
Trying to cope with PED by numbers... I discovered your channel thanks to Matt from ESCUnited (yeah that one !) a few days ago. Great work, keep it up 🤘
Oh lol did you hear me in the background of one of his vids? We were sitting beside each other for the final 😂
Malta is a combination of things; small country struggling with televote, running order with Finland being the more 'fun' entry as you said but also the performance looked very chaotic and messy on tv.
I have decided that I live in an alternate universe where the jury vote was included and Latvia got in at tenth.
I get it, I'm already living in an alternate universe where there was televote only in the final, and thus the right song won.
Great analysis as always, Tom. Thanks so much!
Could you also make a video like the one you're planning on doing with Ireland, but just with Denmark instead? Like, go into why Denmark has been placed so low in recent years, and possibly go into how DMGP differentiates from NMGP and Melodifestivalen. I would really love for Denmark to do well, and you would also think that they would do so, because DR is quite a big broadcaster with a lot of money. But they just don't sadly. Anyway love your vids :-)
Hey yea I can see what I can do. It depends whether I’ll be able to do some research or not. The reason I know so much about the Irish system is because any source material is in English. But i can look into it
I'm amazed Ireland even managed 12th place. Totally deserved 0 points🤦♀️ 😂
Seriously, Ireland ranking above Netherlands, Azerbaijan and Malta is just not right. All of those countries had better songs AND performances.
Interesting comment Emma, I disagree as I thought the Irish entry was good but not a winner. I'm keen to learn why you believe its a nil pointer and I can see that the Eurovision public voters agree with you...... I'm keen to know why?
@@patrickfarrell9230 As you like the song, I'm gonna try to not be too harsh but... Ireland was my last place as well because the song sounds to me incredibly bland, it's been done before but better. On top of that, you can't feel any authenticity, or anything genuine behind this entry. The lyrics are as generic as it gets and it really strengthens that feeling of being absolutely bland. And the climax was hardly one, falling flat when it's supposed to be anthemic. It just felt like a Eurovision bait song, but those songs don't do as well anymore and on top of that, the attempt was very very poor. Sorry if I've been harsh, but just my feelings and most Eurofans's feelings about it. We told Irish people that this song was a guaranteed non qualifier for months now.
@@maja-tea agree with all of this
@@maja-tea Thank you for your comment Maja and dont feel bad for expressing your view. We both agree that the performane was total rubbish. We only got 10 points so something is radically wrong. Maybe I'm old school but I cannot get my head around why a bunch of old farts in underpants can qualify for the grand final and I'm looking forward to Toms analyses of the Irish entry later.
For the problem of being drawn in the first half, I wonder if a longer recap of the song during the "vote now" phase could be made to offset it? Something along the lines of (and I'm sure that the numbers could be properly figured out, this is just off the top of my head) the first song gets a 20% longer recap than the last song and it's a sliding scale down the running order getting to "0% longer" recap for the last 3 or 4 songs or something. (edit - spelling)
yea ive previously suggested the same thing. i dont know how much of a difference it would make, but i think its worth a try
@@ESCTom Cool, sorry, new to your channel - didn't know you'd already suggested it 😆
I noticed that Moldova did pretty well with the rest of the Romance speaking countries, both in the semi and the final.
Kaarija did beat Loreen!!!! Hooray! Xx
Serbia was so lucky to have the countries it had in the semi
I’m starting to think that jury-only semifinals BUT televote-only finals would solve a lot of problems. You have to bring some quality/seriousness to qualify, but the public has the ultimate decision on the winner and grand final results.
I'd support that, though unfortunatey it'd come one year too late, for Finland :(
Hi Tom, hoping you've moved to Türkiye as part of a crack team to mastermind their glorious ESC return.
#TeamEverywayThatICan
I do find your analysis Super insightful. I've Been obsessed with voting data since the Finals, and I've Been thinking about revamping the televotes System entirely. What are your Thoughts on how we could Improve the televotes System? Maybe if we could Force people to vote for their top 3 countries, instead of choosing on how they are going to cast their votes? The running System seems to make the best songs of their genre (this Year Finland and Sweden) Huge vote vacuums that Force all other countries to Battle for just their few points
11:46 Regarding the Czech televote, let's not forget that our viewership is rather abysmal, which likely results in our tele being weird. In the semis, israel won because i assume only the yass-type of people (not an insult) even watch them, and in the finale Ukraine probably won because of the diaspora being able to overvote the abysmal czech vote. No clue why our jury gave Ukraine 12 however, that was rather unexpected (although if you watch melfest you know that the czech jury is bonkers hah)
I also feel like countries not qualifying is getting more devastating because i like more of the songs. Maybe it's me paying more attention to the semis but I feel the quality is going up. I'm sad about latvia but then if they beat Serbia to get in I'd also hate that. Someone has to not qualify
Also the viewing figures released are alarming and hope you're doing a video.
Italy -68% for the Semi's. Estonia similar story. I hope they don't withdraw with only 150k watching. Spain down almost a third.
Where did you see these figures?
Which hotel did you stay at Tom with Moldova?
I have since discovered that the guy I was talking to from the Belgium delegation outside my hotel (Radisson Blu) was Gustaph's husband!! He never let on who he was :) I also bumped into Conchita coming out of Semi #2 :P Great video as usual.
I was in the Ibis, where Moldova and Slovenia were both staying.
Haha I didnt bump into any big stars on the street. Ive made a promise to myself next time, that im going to organise things better and spend more time around the city
@@ESCTom It was an amazing, surreal week, I had a blast. Hope you did too.
I think there may be a Few Countrys that used their Jury in SF2. (Other than San Marino)
Also Ireland are often Robbed Maps is a Song i listen to almost Daily.
I have set "Dance (our own party) to be my ringtone as a revenge to one of my colleagues and everyone else around me who thought it was boring. I totally love it, and they will have to get used to it, so it can grow on them!
😂 📞
Love from Malta
Malta - I liked the jumpers! But I still can’t remember the tune…
When it was announced that the semis would be only televote, I predicted that no country will finish with less than 20 points in the final. In the end, the last place got 18 points, so I wasn't too far off. And the only country under 20 p. was a Big5 country.
To me, most of the "rest of the world" points came from former ESC participants (Turkey, Hungary, North Macedonia, Bulgaria). You forgot about those.
I'm not the least bit surprised of Latvia and Azerbaijan having a connection in Eurovision, because they were the two countries I voted for in the first semifinal. Am I the missing link? 🤔
No, really, the first semi was pretty pop heavy, and the more alternative songs were Latvia, Azerbaijan, and Serbia, and maybe Finland. It tends to be that countries who send something other than pop, also vote for other less pop songs.
I don't fully know how the jury votes are determined, but I think some more transparency might be necessary about how the juries are selected, etc. I don't know if a jury could have saved all the songs I wanted to qualify from the semifinals, because there were too many good songs. It sucks we need to leave anyone outside of the final, but it is what it is. I do prefer the current system over the earlier systems, because at least everyone gets to sing once each year.
Since you're in Istanbul, how about you urge them to return to Eurovision? Turkey always had amazing songs, and I really miss them.
I think that Malta flopped because if you wanted to vote for a fun song, there were much, much better ones in this semi final. I think it lacked a point of view or something that would make it stand out - in my opinion it was quite generic and childish. I feel better in my sweater?? :/
Cary UK: 00:23 20/05/23 - It's just come to me in an epiphany...how to solve the issue of jury final and running order bias....broadcast the jury final show an hour or so behind, then show the songs in a random order to the national juries!!!....Eurovision-shire, you're welcome :-)
How different the televotes of the Big 3 are makes me wonder why? Could it be that some of the smaller countries' televote scores were actually jury votes, hence favoring the favorites? Or is it because the Big 3 are less susceptible to block/neighbor voting? Or is it because the voters of the Big 3 include more varied casual voters while smaller countries primarily have fans voting in the semi's?
the only obsessive thought about the semi 1 that I have is that my top-2 songs were fighting for the last spot in the final 😭my thoughts on that (I'm trying to be objective keep in mind they're still my winner and runner-up):
- 🇷🇸 got lucky with countries in the semi - the highest points came from 🇨🇭 and 🇭🇷
- if the juries were present in the semi I'm 100% sure 🇱🇻 could've made it instead of 🇷🇸. also 🇳🇱 could've been jury q
- let's compare final results with semi results. there's a HUGE gap between 9th and 10th place in the semi 1, 🇷🇸 got twice less points than 🇵🇹. the 3rd slot in the running order is the worst slot to qualify BUT I believe that if the song is liked by (in this case) the televote then it will qualify no matter what slot it is. with that in mind I just wanna say but unfortunately the general public didn't get 🇷🇸 's song. some people say that the live performance wasn't THAT but we've seen many "disappointing" live performances that scored good with the public
- looking at the final results - the 5th slot has one of the best televoting results from 2017 to 2022. it's hard to judge 'cause cha cha cha took all of the "alternative" songs points but I don't think that smss was the victim of the running order. it's the song that didn't grab televoters' attention and these things happen 😭 also some people say the live performance in the final was weaker compared to semi final - the sound wasn't good on tv and the nerves took over that's why the delivery might've fallen flat. I'm very sad to say it 'cause it's one of my favorite songs performed on eurovision stage EVER
- as for 🇲🇹 which was "a very televote friendly" song and was performed before 🇷🇸, they never scored high numbers with televote before ("no voting power") and the death slot played its role me thinks
I tried from NYC to use my 20 votes and the payment was rejected by my bank once and again.
As a Dutchie, I want Snollebollekes to represent us sometime😫😌
I dumped so many votes into Latvia, and hey, ROW did give them 8 points.
Would have been soulcrushing had we done it and Luke Black been punted out as a result however
Im from Malta
Also I wouldn't be surprised if most of the ROW voters were from South American countries, in the final Spain got points from ROW and Portugal and I wouldn't be surprised if it was the spanish speakers were voting for Spain (or they're eurovision fans who like the fan favourite songs).
There are many Latvians in Ireland
Btw are the backup Jury results ever going to be released? I feel like Latvia and Iceland would’ve qualified with the juries instead of Serbia and Albania 🙃
I don’t think they’ll release them. There’s literally nothing to be gained by doing so
Not sure if more recaps is the solution, but I wonder if a recap after the first half (or even possibly after the first third for the final) would alleviate some of the running order issues?
Or doing the recap backwards, like what happened in the early 2000's.
Could also who you have in your semi play a part in the some countries struggle to qualify? I know I couldn’t vote for Malta 🇲🇹 this year and Latvia 🇱🇻 last year because they were in opposite semi final from my country of Australia 🇦🇺 so couldn’t vote them.
I can bet that us and Georgia will Q together,we will not walk alone.
i really hope so. I want Latvia to get some luck too. Two years in a row in the harder semi with 1st half draw.
At least Georgia had a great draw this year
I actually predicted Malta being last. I thought the song was a little basic, and the staging was very after school special and a bit cringe. Much like Latvia 2022, and even Czechia 2019
Anybody knows what's the thing between Portugal and Sweden? In 2001, 2013 and 2016 Portugal did not enter to the contest when Sweden hosted. Or is this just a coincidence? Anyway kind of interesting. Hope it's not the case next year.
im pretty sure that 2013 and 2016 were financial reasons, but one of the Portuguese here might be able to confirm
@@ESCTom in 2000 (when Sweden hosted, not 2001) they failed to qualify for the show due to track record. that was one of the elimination systems used before the semi final was introduced in 2004.
Financial reasons back in 2013, reformulating the national final in 2016, which worked because we won in 2017. Portugal doesn't have any reasons to withdraw next year, this qualifying streak is encouraging us to keep on sending good entries and the interest in the show is growing rapidly (both SF1 and GF were leaders by audience). Pretty sure we'll be back next year in Sweden!
@@miguelc6740 Thanks for clarifying!
It wud be nice to know what kindoff juries was there... from what backgrouds they have?... Example what i saw about that "big 5" that mostly they all gave 🇸🇪12 points and 🇫🇮0. To me thats weard.. of course there was other countries allso doing 12-0... 😔
Anyway keep up good work... Not so long to next ESC 😂
I think main reason for Tattoo consistently gathering more points, is that the areas it's excels at are easier to measure objectively, for a professional. There's a clearer formula to follow to check if the boxes are ticked and in Loreen's case they are. Where as with Käärijä's performance, it's bit more unconventional, so it comes down more to whether or not you connect with, what putting out, so it's more subjective and thus also gets a more uneven (and a bit more luck based) result.
Intriguing, as here Big 5 had Finland 2nd and Sweden only 9th, or something... (Deserved place for it 😂) Of course that's the televote, but still!
Sweden over the last 5 years vs Norway
Sweden juryvote 1138
Sweden televote 603
Jury advantage 107 points per year
Norway juryvote 203
Norway televote 797
Jury disadvantage 119 points per year
Finland got robbed. But don't hate Loreen it's not her fault
I thought the busker was utterly forgettable tbh. It's like something you'd hear on Grafton street of a Sunday afternoon and you wouldn't stop to listen either. La Venda had the same "random dude grabbing a mike at the party" vibe and went the same way. Not surprised at all at the results.
Rest of the world is going to be mostly America but I just wondered if it also included Belarus and russia. Which wouldn't be ethical towards Ukraine but wouldn't surprise me either, that they were let vote on the sly.
Also nice to see France and Italy can still recognise songs with merit and vote accordingly
If any countries are going to benefit from the rest of the world vote via diaspora/heritage , it would surely be Israel, Armenia, Spain, and Portugal. Every country has some diaspora, but those would be the most plugged in, so to speak, or the most culturally connected two large populations abroad. We shall see how much that plays out in the future, but it is something to look out for.
If we were in 2nd Semi
Azerbaijan and Latvia - both postsoviet republics, they were in the same country for 50 years.
With this second place for Loreen, Alexander Rybak is still the only person to win 2 Eurovision Semi-Finals. Although he didn‘t won the Televote in that Semi.
It's funny that Malta did not get more points form rest of the world, bc they have huge diaspora in Australia a d the US.
Australia couldn’t vote for them though cos they were in sf2
@@ESCTom oh of course!
Istanbul? man you do get around dont you?!
In the Netherlands there have been loads of comments indeed clamouring for the return of a national final; however, more recently I have seen more and more people stepping up commenting that it would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. We've been doing sooooo much better with internal selections, the quality of our entries has improved so much and actual good musicians have been so much more invested in Eurovision. Our national finals, especially during our "dark years", were totally sh*t and national embarassments. And I think the whole idea that this should be some kind of democratic process is just not right.
Sure, things should have gone differently this year. The broadcaster probably shouldn't have thought "oh, it's a depressing song written by Duncan so this will work out fine", while forgetting that Duncan doesn't have the experience needed to do for Mia & Dion what Ilse did for him. So yes the whole procedure could use some freshening up and yes it would be great to have a song representing us that isn't about sadness and depression.
Regarding the others: I was especially sad for Latvia, this was an excellent entry and a gorgeous performance which really deserved to qualify. I hope the Latvians do see the outpouring of support they've been getting to keep up the good work for next year, and fingers crossed they'll have a better draw next year in the weaker semi.
The rest of the world has pretty good taste; they also gave Spain points in the final. Probably Latin America? Indeed it would be fascinating to see where these votes came from.
I voted for Portugal and Latvia, so I'm happy my votes actually resulted in points for them 🙂
I think Malta didn’t qualify because this song isn’t risky enough, if it makes sense. It’s likable by many but pretty average. So if you only vote for 1-2 countries it’s not on your list of votes. It’s just somewhere there in the middle. If there was jury maybe they would qualify, because 10 countries basically get voted with jury.
I’m kinda happy my country (Israel) gave them 2 points out of those 3. We usually appreciate fun in here 🎉❤
Why Malta did so poorly:
1. Bad televoting history & no "friends"
2. Strong SF
3. RO & 1st half
4. Repetitive lyrics
@@Texaslawhornes sure and croatia didn’t mention the tractor all that much.
@@seansean8980 haha I had no idea what they were saying. Malta had a great performance, but repeating "Do you wanna dance?" over and over gets old. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Tom, as someone with a degree (mostly in popular music) may I e-mail you with my thoughts!?
100% Latvia would’ve qualify if juries would’ve been able to vote in this semifinal. Serbia and Croatia wouldn’t been top 10 jury in semifinal. They scored low in final.
For me the busker was too serious for the viewers and the lead singer was not charismatic enough, i think it would have done really good with the jurys since it was serious and quality.
Azerbaijan connection prob from Soviet Union with Latvia,same as Moldova.
The result for The Netherlands in the semi final is the worst result pointswise in the history of the ESC since the semifinals were introduced.
Maybe due to the strong opposition, but I believe mainly due to the (worldwide?) criticism.
Would love to see my country send an upbeat Dutch spoken song, for instance by Maan & Goldband. Their song "stiekem" just became the best Dutch spoken song in the history of the Dutch Top 40.
I'm not sure about malta, personally I heard from everybody about how good the song was and it has never connected with me in the slightest.
From minute one it fell to me like a very artificial and forced version of ' look how fun and cool we are' and the chorus is extremely unsingable. It instantly gave me vibes of the band AJR, which I also happened to strongly dislike.. I'm not sure if any of that was true for other people in the televote, but it was the weakest song in this semi by a decent margin for me.
Latvia is probably the closest country to Azerbaijan in this semi (Maybe except Moldova) culturally and historically though