Flemish broadcaster VRT has claimed that the six countries with irregular voting patterns had decided beforehand to award each other points.
This comes after Saturday night’s statement from the EBU — issued during the grand final broadcast — saying that their voting partner had found that six participating countries’ juries had shown an “irregular voting pattern.”
After noticing that something wasn’t right, the EBU decided to scrap the jury scores from these countries. Instead, Eurovision organisers made aggregated results based on how countries with similar voting patterns had voted.
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The statement prompted widespread speculation from both Eurovision fans and press. The vague and somewhat opaque statement from the EBU media team gave little away, except that it concerned the scoring of six countries who participated in semi-final two.
On Sunday, Flemish broadcaster VRT, which was not involved in the Belgian entry this year, published a short article on their website. The Dutch-language television station wrote:
“From a good source, we have learnt that the national juries of the concerning countries had agreed to give each other points.”
The EBU has neither confirmed, nor denied this claim.
Who are the six countries involved?
While the EBU has not stated the names of the participating nations involved in the situation, there has been strong fan speculation about who they are.
Many Eurovision fans have observed that on the official Eurovision.tv website, the names of the jury members of exactly six countries have not been made public.
Three of these countries did not give out their jury scores during the Grand Final. Instead, Executive Supervisor Martin Österdahl announced their points. VRT continues:
“Behind the scenes, it can be heard that the countries refused to call their points, because the EBU had changed their points (after the discovery of fraud).”
It’s not the first time that the EBU has decided to scrap jury scores. In 2014, the EBU blocked Georgia’s jury score after they found that scores of the jury members were too similar. A year later, this happened with both Montenegro and North Macedonia.
In 2016, a member of the Russian jury was removed after she had Periscoped the Jury Show and shown her scorecard. Most recently, in 2019, Belarus’ final jury result was infamously annulled after jury members had spoken about their favourites publicly in the media.
What ebu did is partly unfair
I mean instead of changing all the points they could have only changed the irregular ones
I mean since when does Romania give 0 to mdova but 12 to Ukraine?or Georgia 0 to Ukraine and 12 to the UK? That even more strange .
We need full voting details and names of the jurors from both Semifinal 2 and Final, EBU has been too forgiving in the past and now it’s time to make sure everyone is playing by the rules.
Stopping this would be easy. First set up a process for independent review of appeals. Then, notify every country that if they get caught cheating they will be disqualified from next year’s contest and fined a significant amount – say 150.000 Euros. And if you get caught cheating twice in a specified time period, say 10 years – you will be disqualified for 5 years and assessed 5 years worth of fines or 150.000×5=750.000 Euros. REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU PLACED!! Anybody who is still willing to cheat after such harsh penalties can just be banned outright on their third offense… Read more »
Fines would not work for oil rich Azerbaijan the worst cheaters. Otherwise agree, and exclude them from the contest they tried to manipulate as well. Jurors who took bribes or otherwise manipulate and their organizations should get lifetime ban.
Why EBU didn’t ban this 6 Countries from qualafication like they do for Israel ? 2 kisses from Israel are more scandal than vote cheating ? In this case Romania and Azerbaijan must stay out from the grand final and North Macedonia with Cyprus to take their place. Only with stricht punishment juries are going to be afraid in the future. And something last , most probably this is one good reason why juries ignore Poland in Grand Final, because delegations know this scandal before the Grand final !
1) The juries ignored Poland because their effects and overall live performance was kitschy and cringy. We should accept it and move on.
2) What happened with Israel? They were eliminated because of low votes, not disqualification. Unless I missed some serious events happening…
Isreal wasn’t eliminated finally, but I think his behaviour in fact didn’t help him – yeah, it could be funny if he appeared for a sec, but then it was just cringy. Polish live permormance was really good, one of best vocals! Staging killed it
Israel was banned from entering the stadium
He was eliminated either way
That’s what I’ve understood: EBU has proofs that si countries did manage to help each other. Which would be absolutely unfair.
Romania already released their actual jury vote and it makes way more sense than the “aggregate votes” from EBU
Are you M.O.? They haven’t shown the proofs yet.
I just read that Italy stopped many hacking attempts on voting, so maybe this has something to do with that?
no
Romania published the scorecard for Grand Final on their social media account. Where is the mistake in voting?
can you not read it literally says the second semi final
If you can read you can find also all the votes of all the countries for the semifinale if this is what are you looking for.
For me it’s ridiculous how that situaition was presented and “solved”. The problem are irregular vote patterns – so we’re admiting that regular are appropriate? In other words, it’s a normal thing for jury to vote for the same countries year by year. But if they rate artistic value of entry it theoretically must be irregular every year! The next thing – replacing results with those calculated with algorithm, which has nothing to entries themselves, is replacing fake votes with other fake votes. I totally agree that suspicious votes should be refused and I believe that something really was wrong,… Read more »
I think the same as you, Adam. While there indeed might have been some irregularities here (we have no idea as of now), expecting the countries to repeat the pattern is enforcing stereotypes, and is ultimately not pushing the contest forward.
I’m hoping it was more than just that. For six juries to be thrown out, it must have been glaringly obvious that something was wrong.
But the EBU hasn’t clarified anything, so we are still left speculating. I believe it must’ve been something serious, but if you’re going to remove the votes of a whole jury, you’d rather have proof of fraud. “Irregular voting patterns” sounds too vague for me.
What’s even funnier is that EBU’s “aggregate”. Votes are like this
Azerbaijan and Georgia vote sin the final were they exact same
Congrats EBU
Even I could make a better algorithm
KICK AZERBUYJAN THE PHAQ OUT AND BAN THEM FOR LIFE
omg
I’m sure Österdahl had good reasons for taking action – and didn’t do so with a light heart. I think it is time that some of us applaud that the EBU doesn’t turn a blind eye to irregular voting.
Finally someone said it!
Employee ?
The part I don’t understand is how 348 fake points is any better. Just count the results of the thrown out juries as zero. It’s not important that the jury and televote are exactly half and half. What’s important is that the scores and winner are decided by humans.
Agree.
Romanians voted exactly how was expected and made sense.
Moldova song it’s about the unification of our countries and how we are the same so of course Romania would have give the maximum points to them not Ukraine. We love Ukrainians and we help them and welcomed them in our country with open arms but the song of Moldova is the song of our lost and hopefully future country. No irregular voting and the only fraud is from EBU. Shame on them and I hope they will answer for it!
Cyprus and Greece have left the chat…
True, but if they do that they need somewhat fair results…not Romania giving 0 to Moldova
Österdahl is infallible. He is our Pope.
Right now got my suspicions completely confirmed, the Romanian anouncer of the national jury points said they received from EBU system the modified list to anounce 12 pts going to Ukr… I am sure now that more than those 6 accepted what EBU asked to transmit, their votes… One of the others being as said before Moldavia
I just wish EBU would get rid of the juries for real, as much as they often do save some of my favorite songs from abysmal results, the whole system just seems unfair and corrupted, not to mention they pushed three really poor performances that no one cared about into qualification (azerbaijan, Switzerland and Belgium), our final this year could’ve been quite stronger.
Haha, Belgium was 10th in Televote during the Second Semi-Final. So in any case, this ‘poor’ performance would be in the final 😉
Belgium was 8th during the second semi final
How is Cyprus voting for Greece and the other way around not an irregular voting pattern? Ooh, maybe its because its very regular ?
What a mess, I just do not agree with what they did during the final, if you discovered some abnormalities just grant points from 34 countries, do not make up the points for 6 of them!!
What about Greece’s jury voting for Azerbaijan – 4 juries gave it 12 points, same with Spain.
We need more rules!! More regulations.
To prevent 12s to azeris ?
Well of course it was strange seeing Greece awarding 12 to Azerbaijan but that should not be an irregularity like many fans say
And I’m glad the EBU didn’t change that too BC that would basically mean removing points from Azerbaijan
The 12 points to Azerbaijan by Greece is because Kontopoulos (the writer of most Greek songs) and Evangelinos (staged most Greek entries) have close ties with Kirkorov (Russian writer with connections to Moldova and Azerbaijan). When these 3 men are involved with any country, you can be damn sure they’ll exchange pre-planned votes with each other! I genuinely don’t know how Greece is close with Azerbaijan! As a Greek I thought Greece would give their 12 jury points to Spain or Serbia!
Another issue is that all the 6 countries that have their votes wiped were in the second semifinal. So 1/3 of these juries had wrong results based on the other countries. Here we have the question of different countries probably making it to the semifinal…
what would be indeed interesting… to know exactly the jury scorecards from those 6 blamed, compare them to the EBU “exchange plan” and see where is the difference made and who is the real cheater of the night! the only ones of 6 to shout until now were Romania and Georgia, from the 1st EBU took the 12 pts (awarded to Moldavia by the jury) and gave them to Ukraine (0 to neighbors MDA!), in Georgia 12 from Ukraine to UK?! the news is about 6 countries… 3 “couldn’t due to technical problems” enter the live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNf9FvBqXJc (you can see… Read more »
Could not agree more, how is Romania and Moldova giving each other 12 points not fair, but giving each other low points or even a 0 is ok?! What the hell, why are some countries so privileged and are never being investigated…
This is how the Romanian jury ACTUALLY voted: Moldova – 12 Greece – 10 Poland – 8 The Netherlands – 7 Azerbaijan – 6 Australia – 5 Italy – 4 Spain – 3 Finland – 2 Lithuania – 1 And here are the changed results from the final: Ukraine – 12 Sweden – 10 UK – 8 Portugal – 7 Australia – 6 Switzerland – 5 Italy – 4 Netherlands – 3 Greece – 2 Spain – 1 This is appalling! If you don’t like how some countries voted and is messing your agenda then scrap their votes don’t make… Read more »
Scandal! That is a better vote. Romania is not guilty. Moldavia deserved the points not the Ukraine rap. EBU needs to explain itself.
SURPRISE SUPRISE, AZERBAIJAN IN ANOTHER SCANDAL. NOTHING NEW HERE!
Georgia and Montenegro also. EBU should ban these 3 countries for next 3 years.
This is a huge problem, because considering the information we already know, this changes 2nd and 3rd position… and that’s probably switching the country that hosts next year. EBU needs to explain this situaiton properly, and they need to do it asap.
Well we don’t know if any of the top positions would change do we? And there’s only speculations about what country will host next year. Ukraine are still set on hosting and in the end if they’re not able to then another country will be asked to host and that doesn’t necessarily have to be the runner up.
The information we know so far is not speculation. The modified results benefict UK:
Azerbaijan: 12UK – 5Spain
Georgia: 12UK – 5Spain
Montenegro: 5UK – 8Spain
Poland: 8UK – 1Spain
Romania: 8UK – 1Spain
San Marino: 8UK – 12Spain
That’s 21 points of difference, enough to change the results. The simple elimination of those scores (and not replacing them) would alter the result. Also, we already have some of the affected countries complaining, like Romania.
But how would you know how they originally voted and how much UK or Spain benefited from that? They haven’t released anything on how the disqualified juries voted and how much the aggregated results differed. The results for UK and Spain could still be the same? Unless they release the original points given then people can only speculate and speculations are not reliable in any way.
romanian jury: UK 0 Spain 5… EBU points for Romania: UK 8 Spain 1… so they put 12p UK ahead of Spain artificially… only from here! it seems as an “irregular pattern” here 😀 EBU has no comment until now to make because they do not have any solid argument for what they did and first of all because (being the head of public televisions from Europe) did’t expect that someone will not play as their song was… even the Romanian tv presenter said that she received the modified list from EBU (12p UKR instead for MDA) and she was… Read more »
Romania gave 3 point initially to Spain. What was seen on the screen were modified results by ebu.
Meanwhile Ukrainian public and state officials are ganging up on their jury just because they didn’t give points to Poland, Lithuania, Estonia etc. Yeah, let’s keep glorifying and whitewashing Ukraine…
The country that brings most politics to the contest, what else did you expect
The system with the summation of places is not correct.
The song that won the 5th place among all the juries is will get more points than the song that took the first place from the four and the last place from the fifth jury.
Pop songs benefit from this (Spain, UK, Sweden). But unique songs will always lose (Ukraine, Serbia, Moldova).
Each member of the jury must choose only 10 and give them points from 1 to 12. Then these points must be summed up.
Please let’s settle on the UK from the get go. Trying to host in Ukraine could lead to many issues and even a sudden cancellation if things go very wrong.
We had enough with the 2020 cancellation. I’ve read an idea that the UK and Ukraine could co-organise in the UK as a host, but showing Ukraine culture and people living in the UK during the postcards, and even having hosts from both countries. That would be super cute.
I think it will so. But I hope not. In any case, the UK should be ready for such an option.
It somehow feels odd to me tbh. I prefer that country which would host the contest hosts it as if they won. Ukrainian broadcaster has much more issues than to organise such large event and EBU understands that. I just don’t get their delusional president who thinks ESC is small-scale event and that they could be able to host it after all those atrocities and the war still lasts.
Of course they won’t host if the war still lasts. Plan is for war to end by then. Whether it’s realistic is another issue and that’s beyond the scope of this forum.
I definitely hope that they settle an international location as soon as possible. It should be worthy to mention that last time Ukraine hosted in 2017, half of their production team decided to leave just two months before the contest was gonna start, due to them complaining about corruption. The EBU had to call in Christer Björkman and an international production team in a rush to help produce the show. I very much doubt that the EBU wants to repeat something like that ever again.
What I found really weird is that the spokesperson for Romania was ready to give the votes and they did not even connect with them to do so (?) I saw a video on Twitter of this exact moment, and she was just like “ehm… what is going on, why are they giving out our votes”. I’m not sure if that was a technical issue because most of the countries that are allegedly part of this group of six did not appear on camera either so… yeah, got me thinking something strange was going on ._.
There weren’t any technical issues. She was ready to give the votes and they lied. She could hear Mika just fine while he was saying they couldn’t make a connection and she was like “What? I can’t believe this! I just can’t believe it!”
On a side note I really hate the televote reveal process… not the order it’s done in but the fact that low point countries are forced to endure it on camera. Its so horrible. I’d say only show those who get like 80-100 points plus.
Yeah, I kinda agree with that. We didn’t see it on cameras but Marcus from Switzerland nearly cried in Sam Ryder arms after receiving 0 point from public…
I love the fact that they reveal public points at the end but I think they should come back at the format from 2016-2018 when they began to announce the countries with the lowest points from public and finish with those with the highest points. And they should only show the singers from top 10.
If he didn’t want to get a bug zero and cry, he should have send a better song. The public has spoken.
You seem to be a really nice person… the world doesn’t work this way. You can’t always be the best but it doesn’t mean your work worthes nothing.
I like your idea. I know it’s “just a show”, but the emotions are real and I was terribly sad when I saw Marcus’ disappointment.
Relax, it’s a show. Everybody (artists, delegations and fans included) should treat it as such. Scoring high must not be the only purpose. Not everyone in life can get medals and distinctions. I love it when artists take their low points with grace and a smile. that’s life.
Don’t forget that artists are people too. They’re not robots. They have feelings like everyone of us.
Ok guys, please excuse me if I sound dumb, but can you explain to me the concept of voting patterns. Is it just the order of what the jurys’ votes are in or is it something else?
and what makes them irregular
Thanks for your explanation! However what I don’t understand is why the EBU’s “aggregated results” also didn’t match any voting patterns? Like, Romania usually gives its highest score to Moldova or Spain. But not this year?
They did. The song from Moldova is about our counties being one. That’s how we Romanians feel since Moldova was part of Romania and we lost it during the Second World War. Same language same ?? Of course we give them the maximum points.
Romania didn’t not do anything wrong and they voted absolute the right way. Their vote should have counted and they presented it already to the public and it makes complete sense so we know for sure that the only ones wrong are the EBU. They should answer for this and they should apologize to the Romanians and the Romanian delegation who are very respected and talented individuals.
That’s false, the actual votes offered by the jury of Romania was published on their FB page and only one juror put Moldova in 2nd place, the rest in 1st, median 1st, hence 12 points to Moldova.
I’m really against scrapping jury votes as I do believe they increase the quality, reward quality songs and make it more suspenseful.
We need a few reforms. Increase national juries to 8 or 10. Increase the fine ag broadcaster who selected jury members that cheat. And if any jury’s result seems suspicious, cancel that Nations jury vote and go off the televote.
Otherwise you end up with serhat being in the top 10 (?) and Moldova being top 3/4
And yet, I still listen Serhat. What a positive song!
Another reform I would like to see regards the public vote. The public should only be allowed to vote once for its preferred song and not have a maximum of forty voting chances (20 from their landlines and 20 through SMS/eurovision app). This gives a popular vote which does not equate with the real and most popular song. I’ll give a practical example. 10 people vote once for song A while 2 people call in the maximum 40 times for song B. So actually song A is the most preferred one by the public. Yet song B wins because while… Read more »
It’s not the only problem. I’ve just seen how other jurors in Europe ranked Serbian song. Jurors from very anti-Russia countries like Latvia, Estonia, Moldova or Ukraine all ranked Serbian song in bottom 3, are you kidding me? I might understand that some jurors did not like it, but I would rank such song and artist in bottom 3 only if I had something really against Serbia. At the same time jury of Australia ranked her in TOP 3 overall. It was obvious many jurors already had negative bias towards Serbia as a country just because of politics. EBU needs… Read more »
I’m from Ukraine and I’m sorry about that. But some juries have real problems with the evaluation of unique songs. And this is a big problem. Sorry, Serbia and Moldova.
Ukrainian jury literally ranked her dead last :/
Sorry but Serbia’s song wasnt musically good song; that’s why juries might not have liked it because it was simply “absurd” which can be either liked by juries or not so liked by juries. I don’t think this was due to bias.
Some juries even ranked Sweden’s, Italy’s songs in bottom 5 ranking; I don’t think that juries are biased towards Sweden and Italy
I’m pretty sure that Serbia was ranked last in Ukrainian juries because of the pro-russian government of Serbia
Strange, Ukraine won eurovision 2times because of politics, and it is okay for EBU, but they even have not said anything to 6countries broadcaster that they votes were removed and even Moldova gave 12 points to Romania but they changed and gave 12 to Ukraine, this all not suspicious? And what is the problem if the juries voted differently from semi finals? Maybe they did not qualify or maybe there were big 6? Where is the logic? And juries votes show that really care about good music not sandwich songs… Televotes are shame… people’s tastes getting worse and worse
Indeed, Moldova was not in the group of 6 punished countries, so it’s supposed to be free to vote anyway they like, and yet, in the last moment it changed 12 points from Romania to Ukraine. Let’s admit it : EBU pushed Ukraine who knows in how many ways.
Really sad to see that some countries are still trying to cheat but I disagree with a lot of people here saying that we should remove juries or give them less power. I think they do a great job and avoid the mess caused by the public. Sometimes juries make some less too but both juris and public form a balance that I find logical. Do you realise that once again the public gave really little points to some great entries like Australia, Azerbaijan or Czech Republic? I mean I understand why Australia and Azerbaijan received very few points but… Read more »
To cheat? Are you kidding? Who cheated here is Ebu!!!
Take it personnally if you want. Didn’t say EBU was totally fair but we all know some of the countries among the 6 concerned here are not at there first try… So yeah, I use the word cheating for those kind of things. At least if the want to do so, they could try to make it not obvious.
Well said! I agree 100%. And this year’s result was one of the fairest I remember.
All Juries gave Moldova only 8 points(!)
And in televoting in came 2nd
You must be joking saying this is right
Jeez, did I target especially Romania in my comment? I talked about the 6 countries in general. And if the EBU had to intervene, it’s probably because there was really something wrong.
Still EBU should have warned the countries before because it was really badly done.
“Behind the scenes, it can be heard that the countries refused to call their points, because the EBU had changed their points (after the discovery of fraud).”
That’s not true. The romanian spokesperson was denied to go live and present their points and she found out right before she was supposed to announce the results.
EBU should first stop its own cheating by creating itself the running order only to favor the odds favorites, adding strategical breaks. Swap the UK and France and you probably get also the same swap in the televote points.
Swap Greece and Sweden and maybe the same too.
No, swapping starting positions will not mean that the points are automatically swapped – e.g. the UK and France had completely different songs so the viewers voting for one song will most likely not vote for the other no matter the positions. Greece and Sweden had slightly similar songs, but they are still different enough that they’re not gonna appeal to the same viewers as well.. and Greece already had a great starting position in-between Belgium and Iceland, you really think they’d get more votes from performing in-between Moldova (2nd highest televote) and Australia?
Greece was after a break for ads, that seems a bad position to me.
(I am Greek but I don’t care that much about that song in particular, I preferred the Netherlands but Sweden is overrated every year and the running order is shady.)
Juries should be professional musicians or just anyone who knows even a little bit about music and not broadcasters and radio hosts…
Romania’s jury is comprised out of 4 singers and one score composer from the film industry. 2 women and 3 men. No broadcaster or host of any kind. The votes are presented by a host, of course.
Leaving aside the jury votes from San Marino, Romania, Montenegro, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Poland the final result would have been; Spain 435 points, United Kingdom 413 points and Sweden 390 points.
Why are you so sure?
There has to be some kind of jury system. Obviously it doesn’t work in it its current form, but to scarp it altogether would be a terrible mistake. The quality of songs was really poor when the outcome of competition was decided only by the televote. So much that I didn’t watch Eurovision for almost ten years. The whole thing became too silly back then!
scrap
Juries tend to elevate two kinds of songs: Either songs that are qualitative but perhaps don’t put that much of a show to be noticed by the public (and I applaud them for elevating these), or radio-friendly boring tracks (but as we saw this year bribing and corruption may be problems) . The televoting on the other hand tends to elevate two different types of songs: Either creative, groundbreaking entries (and I applaud them for that) or more trashy dance songs (and as we saw this year they can also be more easily swayed due to sympathy). So yes, in… Read more »
Just get the OGAE groups to become the juries. I don’t see how it would be worse than current juries and you wouldn’t be able to corrupt that many people who care so much about something
I don’t really want the same 3 countries to win every time so no thanks
That would be the worst
Disaster!
If OGAE has power, we’ll have only queens in ESC :
1. Ronella
2. Chanel
3. Andromache
100% better than random jurors with no understanding of Eurovision and don’t have the first thought: do i have a connection w this act? and how can i get a job
But what are those six countries?
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, and San Marino (according to wiki)
Thank you!
Every mess in 21st century Europe comes from the East…
Why are People downvoting? Its true?
Because its
1) Racist
2) Generalization
3) Stupid
The juries are cheating, the public votes out of pity generally it is a pretty fair contest..
the public doesn’t vote out of pity. this year people votee for ukraine to show solidarity and support, not pity. their song was great. last year they were 2nd in public vote with a similar song and this year there were other countries like serbia that had a big difference between jury and public points, even if half of the voters voted out of “pity” they would still have more than 200 points drom the public, which is succesful. overall their song DID have what it takes to win eurovision. juries voted for basic performances we have every year, no… Read more »
If you want to show solidarity send them food and medicine not 12 points! And don’t mention the song it had nothing to do with it i bet nobody will hear it ever again.
my country doesn’t join eurovision so i didn’t vote anyways. i agree with your point i don’t think it helps but people did it, i’m not saying i think it’s sensible. also i love the song so much have been listening to it non stop, i’m sure there are people like me who loved it
America Song Contest is right for reducing the power of juries during the finals. Seems like the parent needs to learn from the offspring…
jury fraudulence happens every year, this time they were just caught on tape cheating. there’s no way the ebu would discard so many juries for a trivial reason. i still don’t think 200 people (most of whom aren’t musicians or music professionals, but rather radio hosts and entertainers) should have so much decisional power. yes, they make the voting sequence more suspenseful, but in terms of fairness of the result it leaves a lot to be desired.
Increasing the number of jury members could be a solution. You can bribe 5 jury members, but what about 15? In addition, the panel could consist of the recent participants from a given country. For example 5 of the 15 jurors are appointed by the broadcaster (they are mostly from the same bubble like now), and 10 members are the 10 most recent participants. The chance of corruption will go down significantly in that case.
For consistency sake I hope that you are fine with this year’s televote outcome…
Let’s face it. This year’s voting was problematic in so many different ways. After 2021’s awesome results, I thought we were heading towards a good direction as far as the voting is concerned. I hope that 2023 will be better than 2022.
I honestly believe it will be slightly better. How far worse can it get? Unless Ucraine wins again…
Wait…Azerbaijani is involved in ANOTHER scandal?…again?? Didn’t see this one coming smh. Their entire country should have been banned long before ESC 2022. Right from the stunt they pulled during Malenas performance. But I guess they bribed their way out of that one too. Just like they’ll bribe their way out of this scandal. There are reasons no one takes Eurovision seriously and this is one of them.
Unpopular opinion : the fact that Ukraine got so many JURY votes is not suspicious? Did jury awarded quality of the song? Flash news : the whole ESC 2022 was a big “beep you” to 39 acts.
They were 4th on the jury scorecard. They pretty much called it down the middle there. Look who was in front of them. I was expecting not much more or less than the 318 televote points Italy got last year. The fact that the rest of the public could not decide who else to rally behind tells you all you need to know as to why Ukraine became the default for many.
Whilst the UK and Spain got their 1st top 3 spot since forever?
And to add to my point, they got even fewer jury points than Jamala did (211) in 2016, and only one (Dami Im) was ahead of her (320).
they didn’t get a lot of jury points though
Romania jury give 12 points to Moldova (the official statement of the national broadcaster TVR). But in the night of the show Martin Osterdal (or whatever his name is) was live in behalf of romanian jury and give 12 points to Ukraine (EBU replacement calculations?!)! TVR statement: ?? TVR Responds to Removal of Romanian Jury From Eurovision 2022 Voting The Romanian broadcaster has released a statement to Digi 24 expressing its surprise at the removal of the Romanian jury from the competition. The Romanian jury is one of six juries to have been removed from voting in the contest after… Read more »
Adding the votes EBU decided to rearrange with these 6 juries, Uk got 53 points, Sweden 48 and Spain 24. It looks a little weird and if they were taken out from the competition we would have a clear second position… Spain.
It’s at moments like this where I half-expect the EBU to scrap jury voting next year just because it’s easier.
No thanks you. I don’t want clowns like the Moldovan grandpas to be on top 10 every year.
*3
When I hear about things like that, my first thought is not how much jury changes the outcome of competition. My first thought is : what if a juror really likes Azerbaijan song? Jurors must be terrified, trying to vote how is expected.
Maybe this is why Sweden is jury’s baby. It’s not Sweden’s fault (they are lovely, and put effort), is EBU’s fault for making juries be afraid to think outside the box.
I don’t think this is a problem though. A lot of western juries this year gave points to e.g. Azerbaijan without there being a problem and were completely free to do so without any reprimands. I’d assume the problem here lies with the fact that apparently these 6 countries gave each other 12-10 points and how often do countries end up sharing their top marks the exact same year when they share almost no culture nor geographical ties and maybe never voted for each other any other years? It would be too rare for this kind of voting pattern to… Read more »
I’m scared of what you’re saying : culture, geography… A song it’s just a song, countries change genres every year. Gangnam Style comes to my mind, would have been voted in Europe.
But yes, you are right, they were greedy, who knows how many countries were smarter and got away with it in the past.
Well unfortunately geography and culture plays a huge (I’d say the biggest part even) part in Eurovision when it comes to the voting. That’s why nordic countries, eastern countries, balkan countries (etc.) all vote for each other, because they share similar culture and history so they tend to like similar types of music and performances. You might get a few entries every now and then that gets a lot of points from every country, but not to the point where you can say that block voting isn’t a thing.
We need more balanced rules. Like prior 2016 where votes of juries and televote were combined. It’s ridiculous that country who received 0 points qualified for the final.
Azerbaijan didn’t qualify because the points are combined. Under the old system however, one juror could place a country last and that would pull that country out of the jury’s top 10 resulting in 0 points even if all other jurors had put it 1st. I think I prefer the current system but the juries need to be made bigger and something, not sure what, needs to be done about all this corruption.
Well the jury score now as an algorithm which stops a single juror from hurting the entry this way
The all French Belgian Jury not giving any points to a Dutch song is such spiteful sad move from bitter ppl who just need to grow up. It’s not just the East doing this
Could it be that none of those 5(!) people liked S10’s song?! Like you write yourself, French speaking Belgian’s who have absolutely no affinity with the Dutch language….Drama much?!
Jury from Vlaanderen last year gave 0 points to Voila. It’s just as ridiculous and spiteful
Romania gave 7 points to S10 but EBU modified this in 2 points.
Moldova n Romania not exchanging 12 points is just as unacceptable from the EBU. If you are changing results at least be accurate. And no these countries would not have voted for the UK…
The jury score for Azerbaijan was suspicious, because the public gave them 0 points in the semifinal and those 3 points they received in the final came from Georgia only.
There is no way any jury of 5 people can rank them that high, if the people in the same country didn’t even vote for them almost at all.
It is jury bait song…but yeah Greece and Serbia giving them 12 was a bit…
German jury also voted for Azerbaijan in Semi Final 2. Were they bribed, too? ?
If it was in the final then maybe…but its still a song you can easily see a jury awarding top points too
In cases like these, EBU should align jury points to the televote points.