It’s still extremely early in the Eurovision 2020 season and only one song has been officially selected so far. Nonetheless, it’s still possible to walk into your local bookmakers and place a bet on who you think will win.
And in recent days, people have clearly been doing just that as Italy has shot up to the top of the bookmakers’ ranking.
Eurovision 2020 Odds: Italy favourite to win — 26 January
Currently, Italy is sitting comfortably at number one on Oddschecker’s odds comparison table. Bookmakers such as Ladbrookes and Coral are offering odds of 8.0.
With so many people effectively betting blind, it’s not surprising that money is flowing towards the most successful Big Five country of recent years. Since returning in 2011, Italy has only missed the top ten on two occasions.
But this recent flurry of activity around the land of Il Volo and Mahmood looks to be motivated by the release of Sanremo previews from Italian journalists and bloggers. A chosen few were let listen to the soon to be released Sanremo 2020 entries and then write up their opinions on each track. Those to receive favourable reviews include Elodie and Elettra Lamborghini.
For a flavour of what to expect, read our round-ups of the reviews HERE and HERE.
Other Eurovision 2020 betting favourites
The rest of the top-end of the table is dominated by perennial overachievers.
Russia and Sweden are joint second with odds of 10.0. Expect these numbers to begin to shift in the coming days, particularly for Sweden when the Melodifestivalen acts begin to arrive later in the week.
A glut of entries are next, all trading at 16.0. They are last year’s champs the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia. The first two have revealed their artists while Australia’s national final has yet to take place.
The top ten is completed by Spain, France, Ireland and Israel. The United Kingdom is 11th.
Before you spit out your tea — or beverage of choice — bookies odds tend to be biased towards both Britain and Ireland. Many of the outlets used by sites like Oddchecker originate from one or other of the two countries. And local punters have a habit of always backing their own act.
In fact, most oddsmakers have yet to set odds for over half of this year’s competing countries. On Oddschecker, the only company to offer odds for all 41 countries is Betfair Exchange, and that’s a betting exchange platform rather than a traditional bookies — odds are set by fellow betters rather than the bookmakers.
Eurovision 2020 Betting Odds — 26 January
Odds correct as of 23:00 CET 26 January 2020.
Do you agree with the odds? Are the betting community getting a bit too excited a bit too soon? Let us know in the comments.
Italy, this is a big joke, haha. They are not gonna win.
I’m pretty sure it was before we’ve seen this awful staging
Indeed, there was hardly any staging done, they just stood there.. still painful when i think about it..
Il Volo was robbed by a plastic Swedish entry. That was the year for Italy.
so Italy wasnt plasric 2015. They looks like Ken dolls. And the song was awful
Whatever about the Eurovision, it is a dangerous business that can ruin lives. I should probably have an ad-blocker, but on this very article there’s a company offering me €60 in free bets. I’m sure for some people it’s just for fun, but it can have devastating consequences. The contest is just a hook to draw more victims in and make more money off their addictions. Sad.
It’s always those countries when there are no songs and then it changes
If you were educated you would know that they ONLY have Sweden, Russia, Italy in the top in the start beacuse of recent enries success. When they have choose their entries they can fall low. So take a chill pill.
How polite of you…
And I wonder where’s Iceland? With all the praise for Iva..
just like portugal skyrocketed from 31st to 4th in the odds when salvador won fdc, if iva wins songvakeppnin i expect a similar overnight surge
Wiwibloggs… no words.
World has for sure gone mad… especially with people posting everything that comes to mind even if it is stupid/unnecesary/useless…
If you have nothing to publish, don’t publish anything.
#professionalism #quality #accuracy #specifics
for now odds are useless but it’s good to see they have faith in italy! a guarantee of talent and acclaim
They were 2nd last year. Remember this forced hype on Tamta just because Eleni was 2nd year before? Same goes with Italy already.
except we’ve been getting this treatment for a few consecutive years
Useless odds, same as Franceso Gabanni was favorite and he ended up on 6th position in the final. Or the juries’ darling – Sweden, who is punished year by year by the televoters, for basically sending the same recycled pop junk (no risks taked, not a genre changing)… Meh
Sweden had one of the best entries last year. But uneducated people won’t understand it.
He did and Europeans are stupid…
If people can’t tell the difference of Sweden’s songs in Eurovision then yes. We have sent many guys, but the styles and stagings have been different. I can’t say that Måns Frans and John the past five years have sounded the same or brought the same stagings. And just about every song in Eurovision sounds like something you have heard before. There is nothing original out there. Then you must create a whole new music style.
5th was still great:). 9th best in the televote to.
Still he’s in top 10. If you’re like 14th in odds, you’re doomed. That’s the problem. It decides how top10 looks like
Italian journalists and bloggers.. Well, the italians many times have their own taste in my opinion. And if Italy send a great act to Rotterdam it will be ruined by awful staging like always. So I don’t care much for those odds.
It’s pointless now, there’s not that many known artists let alone entries, remember in 2016 Cool Me Down was an early favourite to win in January and then it didn’t get selected in the selection. Most of the early betting odds can only be attributed to recent year performances and the previews available, the.n the odds relies on reactions and views on YouTube, which also is not very reliable.
Oh shoot, not again. To hell with them odds already. Given how accurate the bookies were in the recent years (at least in the last weeks preceding the event) we should just consider them spoilers and ban them from publication.
Using bookies and making fair judgements should usually only be done one or two days before the Final. But even then it might be just based on air. Prior to that the odds change all the time. Especially now we only know one song, and it might not even be the version that will be sent to Rotterdam, so it is purely based on -money-. Someone rich might “for fun” put in a lot of money for example Russia or Sweden or Cyprus. Then those countries might jump suddenly to the top. Anyway, even though odds are a bit ridiculous… Read more »
I mention this every year but just remember, the odds don’t simply reflect the likelihood of winning. They also serve to minimise bookmaker losses. Obviously, Sanremo is just around the corner and it is only logical that bookmakers are receiving more bets on Italy than countries that aren’t getting as much attention.
Sure they don’t but somehow they correctly predicted Duncan’s and Netta’s wins way ahead of semis which was a major bummer.
Bookies: Heidi-heidi-heidi-ho!
Israel is returning strong this year…ella lee will probably be the representative and she is just irresistible… I put my coins on her. Good luck ti everyone
How can there be favourites already? Ridiculous ?
Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of the odds and their negative effects on Eurovision. People will keep betting, we can’t control it. And many people sadly vote with the odds in mind. I wonder how many entries could do better in the final but didn’t because some of their fans decided to vote for someone “who actually has a chance of winning”. In any case, vehicles that cover Eurovision could do us a service by stop giving them so much importance. Especially when the odds mean absolutely nothing, which is the case at this point of the… Read more »
Fans are a tiny portion of the voters and fans who are affected by the odds are a tiny portion of ESC enthusiasts. For the rest odds bear no significance and many don’t even know about them. Besides, you don’t need the odds to know who the favourites are. Being a part of the Eurovision bubble is far enough.
Two separate things: Yes, we’re in a bubble, we’re a tiny part of Eurovision viewers. But I bet (oops) the bookies pay attention to our first reactions (though of course more in social networks than in blog’s comments, since they’re easier to monitorate), making us sort of “test screeners”. The fandom is like the first gate (though we’re waaaay less powerful than some may assume…). The second is that, in the week of Eurovision, it’s quite normal to find articles in the “big press” pointing who are the favorites and using the odds to pick them. I imagine presenters also… Read more »
I see your point. 🙂 I guess it all comes down to who your country’s commentator is and whether you decide to read those articles beforehand (though this surely isn’t any front-page news, so there’s still a good chance that you’ll either overlook it or ignore it).
With more people watching it in Youtube without comments, maybe the odds’ influence is decreasing also. We’ve had surprise qualifiers, jury winners, televote winners, top 3 placed entries (if I remember it well, Sunstroke Project barely was pointed as a top 10 contender). It would be great to have a surprise winner, showing everything can happen. I guess the last one was Conchita, but maybe it was easy to predict in the day of the final, I can’t remember.
How about juries who vote based on odds so it wouldn’t look like they have no idea what they’re doing?
Also a problem. And when a juror is bashed by not placing a favorite high, I guess more of them become afraid of doing the same. On the other hand, it’s clear that some juries downvote the other frontrunners when their country is fighting for the win. Though it’s more a problem of the jurors being unprofessional than bookies’ fault in this matter.
I don’t know, buddy. For me the odds have the opposite effect. I will vote for the underdog. The song I really like that has crappy odds, because the ones with good odds “will manage well without my vote.”
But isn’t it a different way to react to the odds? And please don’t take as a criticism, because in your place, I would probably to the same! During the semis, I can see a lot of people taking this road. I can’t vote, but in 2019, I would vote for Portugal, Poland, Romania, Albania… because they were supposed to be borderline qualifiers. In the end, we’ll vote for love (of a country, an artist, a song). But the odds may direct our love for those who need the most or have more chance to win.
Is there anything more toxic than odds when it comes to Eurovision? I started following the contest closely since last season and during the Eurovision week I felt “hopeless” because of these bets. Remember when Italy’s staging was revelaed and all of a sudden our winning chances heavily decreased according to the odds? I genuinely thought Italy was going to end up out of the top 10. The sooner we stop paying attention to these things, the better it’ll be for us all.
I try to avoid reading articles about betting odds like the plague, or just leave comments of their irrelevance to the contest. I hate it when I encounter people online who think that odds boost a country’s chance of winning when history has repeatedly proven otherwise.
The beauty of ESC is how unpredictable results can be on the night. Bookkeepers are floaters needing a lifevest because they always float to the next thing that would be of benefit for them until it wasn’t. Screw them.
We haven’t even heard the song They already win!???
Odds don’t matter, so I don’t give a damn anyway. It’s basically “which countries have been doing well the past few years” list at the moment, with some hyped acts like Spain or Belgium taking the top spots as well.
I have a feeling that the Eurovision odds keep influencing the actual contest more and more… Imagine the pressure of being the bookmakers absolute favourite and finishing second. Or imagine how bad it would make you feel when you are giving it your all with an entry only to see odds of 1/300 on you winning. I think bookmakers should somehow be restricted from betting during rehearsal and Eurovision week, even tho thats practically impossible. And I know it’s fun to follow what the bookmakers think but I do believe that it has too big of an impact on the… Read more »
Yeah, also for the producers who decide the running order – are they really gonna place a so-called favourite in third or second place? It kinda becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Acts that are odds’ favourites are usually pretty good (they’re favourites for some reason after all), so naturally they don’t get the worst spots.
I really don’t think odds have any influence at all, they’re just a reflection of what’s currently happening. Viewers don’t think about the odds when they’re voting and neither do the juries. Ireland was 4th with the bookmakers in 2018 and didn’t even make it to the right side of the scoreboard, Switzerland was supposed to win in 2007 and didn’t even qualify.
Why shouldn’t they get the worst spots, though? The producers maintain it is purely to help distinguish each entry and not have similar acts together. Quality isn’t relevant. The viewers and juries will decide what merits reward, nobody else should be making that judgement before voting even starts.
Quality is a factor though. Producers don’t want all the best entries to be performed one after another or too early in the running order. They want the show to be entertaining for the viewer throughout its running time and they want the best acts to place well. They may use the semi results as an indicator, they may not do that, but they have to take the so-called quality into consideration. Just imagine the Netherlands getting the “death spot” in 2019 – would that be good for the contest?
It would have been brilliant to put The Netherlands @ #2, as they never really had any real broad impact getting high televote scores. They just got enough 5-6s across the board to eventually win. Basically, that tells us that Arcade was just average.
The Netherlands last year was a compromise winner due to math, not because it was a favorite – both, the televote and the juries picked others as their winners.
Or maybe it was not that Arcade was an average song, but it was that 2019 was a relatively strong year with many other strong songs from i.e. Italy, Norway, Switzerland, which took away many points, thus even things out, resulting in less extreme points for Arcade.
Have you thought about that? That sounds more plausible to me. That same could’ve happened to Italy, which is not an average song too. Since they ended up quite close, that gives away that they together, with many others were real contenders for the win.
Say what you want, conclude all you want.. Most Eurovision fans loved Arcade.. It was a clear favorite, therfore the one to beat and a clear and justified winner.. Can be bitter all you want but this is factual..!
The running order is treated like a playlist that you program in a radio station. You have to make sure your listeners tune in from beginning to end and there are no similar sounding songs. With that said, part of determining where to place a song in the order is knowing how soon can a delegation’s staging be put together onstage and otherwise. Going by last year, you’ll notice in the 2019 final that countries with large props were either grouped together back to back or are placed after a break to allow additional time for the delegations to prepare.… Read more »
Without a song to base an odd on, nor a stage performance to scrutinize so early on, they’re predictions are never set in stone.
Edit: Posted the wrong response. 🙂
Or, if I may quote Han Solo, “never tell me the odds.”
I told that to myself last year already but you can’t unread the headlines that you inevitably see when visiting a Eurovision website.
Least I can do is let that be the end of it. I’ll probably buckle though. It’s inevitable.
Making a solemn vow this season to skip all the bookie news after this article. Sucks all the fun out of it.
I hate the odds. It definitely affects how people view the song. I remember when Duncan Laurence’s song was released last year, he immediately went to the top of the odds. I think even Wiwibloggs article referenced this. Whether directly or subliminally, it has to affect what listeners think of the song. Then, I’m sure there are some jurors who vote for a song because it is high in the odds and they would be ridiculed if they voted for an outsider. So it becomes a highly suspicious cess pool of a circle.
This!
The day Arcade was released (March 7), the instant positive reactions sent the Netherlands to within striking distance – it was second favorite behind Russia by the end of that day. It wasn’t until 2 days later (March 9) when Scream was released that Netherlands went to the top of the table and never relinquished that position
It can never be too early to take the fun away from Eurovision. Literally the only way to escape that s*** is to not follow Eurovision and just watch the shows without commentary.
How do odds take the fun away from Eurovision? They’re not some evil entity controlling everybody’s minds or spoiling the results. They simply… exist. What is there to be so upset about?
The fan press makes it seem so. They can exist but they need not to be reported.
Because they influence the result thus making the voting less fun.
I always watch it without commentary on YouTube .-.
Me too. Better this way.
Odds have been influencing how people perceive the contest for far too long now.
Please no emphesis on the odds, if all they should be banned they ruin the spirit of the contest!
I so totally agree with you. All they do is away the voters. The viewing public should be able to vote based on performance. They should not be influenced by the Betting odds. EVER
It’s way too early for this betting stuff. WAY WAY TOO EARLY. We haven’t even got 20 songs or acts confirmed let alone 41.