ESC Etc.

In light of Nemo‘s win in this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, the scoring system used in the competition has come under scrutiny again. Nemo‘s win was the result of placing 1st with the international juries and 5th in the televote – the combined score was enough to pull Switzerland ahead of televote-winning Croatia (as of 2024, each set of votes counts for roughly 50% of the vote total, with televote having a slight edge at 50.6%). This isn’t the first time our winner fails to top both sets of scores – as a matter of fact, since the switch to the split vote announcement method in 2016, only once has the eventual winner managed to top both juries and televote. Let’s take a look at a more comprehensive breakdown:

2016: Ukraine (Juries: 2nd – Televote: 2nd)

2017: Portugal (Juries: 1st – Televote: 1st)

2018: Israel (Juries: 3rd – Televote: 1st)

2019: Netherlands (Juries: 3rd – Televote: 2nd)

2021: Italy (Juries: 4th – Televote: 1st)

2022: Ukraine (Juries: 4th – Televote: 1st)

2023: Sweden (Juries: 1st – Televote: 2nd)

2024: Switzerland (Juries: 1st – Televote: 5th)

As these results show, minor disagreements between juries and audience are more of a rule rather than an exception. So what’s all the commotion about? A small but vocal portion of the fandom has taken this year’s results as an opportunity to relitigate what happened in 2023, arguing that juries should not have this much power in selecting the winner, that the televote winner should be the rightful winner of the contest, that juries should altogether not exist, that the show is rigged. Mind you – none of the final results were nearly as contested prior to 2023, not even the two years in which the eventual winner failed to top either set of scores (2016 and 2019). It wasn’t until Loreen beat Käärijä last year that fans of the Finnish act launched a crusade against juries and, ultimately, against Loreen herself, who quickly became the target of a hate campaign online housed mainly on the Eurovision Reddit forum (I am not going to link to it – it is exactly as pathetic a place as it sounds), targeting the song and its perceived quality (or lack thereof), Loreen‘s performance, staging, styling and ultimately, her persona. It only got worse from there. A number of noted ESC analysts and YouTube channels became variously involved and, instead of leveraging their profile to be a more conciliatory voice of reason, some resorted to stoking the flames of resentment – in particular, an on-site correspondent for escYOUnited (he shall remain unnamed because he reportedly still works for them and because I am frankly embarrassed for him) who spent most of the ESC season pitting the two artists against each other, going as far as creating a counter that was supposed to keep track of fan votes on the My Eurovision Scoreboard app to determine when Finland would pass Sweden in the ranking, and then predictably had a complete social media meltdown following the final, further contributing to the utter collapse in reason and civility that characterized that whole debacle. Nevermind that Loreen is, after Portugal in 2017, the winner with the strongest consensus between juries and televote, or that this year’s contest had much, much bigger fish to fry and much more important conversations to be had.

How did we get there? Why do we even have juries in the first place? What would a televote-only ESC look like? From 1998 to 2009, Eurovision winners were determined purely based on televote (with juries differently used as a back-up in case of emergency). Those years are now commonly referred to as the Dark Ages of Eurovision due to the overwhelming number of low-quality novelty acts which were entered into the contest – songs with no real charting prospects or ambitions, mainly engineered as a one night only piece of populist, televote-hoarding entertainment. Predictably, things got bad. Ratings plummeted (between 1997 and 2012, the contest lost some 200 million projected viewers), sponsors bailed, and Eurovision turned into somewhat of a laughing stock worldwide, known for being dated, ridiculous, featuring awful music and joke entries, a reputation which to some extent the contest is still actively trying to shed today. It really is that simple, if you think about it – an international song contest that is consistently failing to produce hits, let alone passable music, is not built on a sustainable formula. Juries were reintroduced in 2009 in an attempt to support and reward quality, radio-friendly hits, but 2012 is in that sense considered a watershed year in the ESC canon: not only did Euphoria chart at #1 in 20 or so different countries worldwide, but Loreen brought to the stage a sound that was actually current and representative of the kind of music people were actively consuming outside of the contest, and in return everyone else was forced to step up their game accordingly. It largely worked – ratings picked back up, more countries showed interest in joining/returning, many winners/competing entries went on to find a life after the contest, and sponsors are nowadays footing the largest chunk of the production costs involved in making the show happen every year.

Which brings us to today. One year removed from the 2023 contest, Tattoo is already the third-most streamed Eurovision song of all time on Spotify, with streams just in excess of half a billion at the time of this post. Even more tellingly, the song managed to chart on every single viral Spotify chart in the world, getting all the way to #1 in 12 countries. The Käärijä army has been so busy trying to delegitimize last year’s results that they have forgotten to actually support the song and the artist they went to war for – by comparison, Cha Cha Cha topped out at #1 in the charts in 4 countries, scoring 140 million Spotify streams as of today (still a great haul, let’s be clear), and Käärijä‘s follow-up single, Kot Kot (which is a bop, by the way, if a bit derivative) is yet to crack 2 million streams on the app, compared to Loreen‘s follow-up single, Is It Love, which is approaching 70 million streams instead. Loreen headlined the Tattoo Tour in 2023, with 17 dates in 15 European countries, selling out all but two shows, and will be touring again next year in support of her upcoming album, with 27 dates covering 17 countries. Käärijä‘s 2023 European tour covered 8 dates in 7 countries, and in 2024 he added 3 more concerts in Finland, with 2 more lined up later this year. These are two great artists that brought two amazing songs to the competition, but reality and facts tell us that one song has outperformed the other by every imaginable measure of appreciation, and that juries did exactly what they were tasked to do – they rewarded the track with the stronger chart and commercial appeal and the longest shelf life following the contest. This isn’t to delegitimize the importance of the televote, let’s be clear – without the audience, there wouldn’t be a contest to begin with. That said, the televote chiefly incorporates the experience of the average ESC viewer who, for the most part, will tune in for the final and vote for the shiny object that made them laugh and entertained them the most and then turn the TV off and go to bed without any real intention to actually listen to that song ever again.

A lot has been made of the fact that both last and this year, juries mostly converged on one song while seemingly ignoring the rest of the field. Tattoo scored 340 points, while The Code netted 365 – respectively the third and second highest jury scores in the history of the contest. Fans of Käärijä and Baby Lasagna mobilized this as a focal point in their criticism of the current voting system. Do you also think this it is too weird to be a coincidence? You’re right, it is not. In 2023, following the much publicized 2022 jury vote scandal, the EBU reverted to televote-only semifinals to determine the entries that would advance to the grand final. This decision, widely praised by supporters of a televote-only ESC scenario, is in fact directly responsible for jury-friendly songs performing better than televote-friendly songs in the final. Why? Because songs that juries would throw points at in the final are getting dumped early in the semis in favor of televote-friendly entries that end up all advancing and then eating up into each other’s televote totals. Voters at home are essentially being given more options to choose from, which is inevitably going to result in their votes being more spread out; juries are conversely being given fewer options, and are therefore more likely to concentrate their votes on the same song(s). Paradoxically, if we really do want to help televote-friendly songs, the answer isn’t to get rid of juries – it’s about finding a way to reintroduce juries in the semifinals, as well. The math says this wouldn’t have made much of a difference last year – Loreen would have still ultimately won the whole thing (she did come in 2nd in the televote, even if some critics seem to conveniently forget about that), and she would have probably won her semifinal, too. This year, things might’ve been different – Nemo did land just outside of the Top 4 in the televote, and more competition from jury-friendly songs in the final might have realistically helped Croatia pull ahead (although there’s no sure way to determine to which extent, what with Joost‘s disqualification and the political block voting that propelled another country to a 5th place finish).

There is no easy fix, obviously. But I am a big proponent of bringing back juries in the semis and actually packing those juries for their votes to reflect more and different perspectives – instead of 5 jurors per country, we could invite 20, test this expanded method for feasibility, and possibly add even more from there. But even more importantly, I am a big proponent of celebrating the results of these artists as meaningful and amazing achievements whether they align with our fantasy or not – that song you love will always be out there for you to enjoy, just one click away, no matter if it came first or last in the contest. Eurovision needs all of our love and support especially now, at a time when the EBU is facing harsh and well-deserved scrutiny and criticism over the mishandling of nearly everything that went wrong this year. This petty and useless bickering over rankings and results and artists who won fair and square helps exactly no one. Redirect your attention to actually supporting your favorite acts in their journey following the contest – stream their music, buy their merch, go to their concerts, amplify their presence on social media. It’ll make you and them feel better. I promise.

Our grand final post-mortem podcast episode will drop soon, and it’s a two-parter (we had lots of opinions and feelings). Stay tuned!!!