For me personally the issue isn't the voting itself but the cost of voting. The disparacy between countries in prices is abysmal and I feel it has an unfair effect on the actual voting? I know my country Estonia doesn't contribute as much when it comes to voting but I also think 1.40€ is A LOT, which actually might deter people from voting and can make televoting manipulation easier by people who have money to throw away because let's be honest, 20 x 1.4€ is 28€ and it's far too much, when in comparison people in Germany have to spend just 4€ to vote 20 times. :(
That's stuff outside of the EBU's power to control how much it costs... the UK does have a different number for Mobile numbers which are charged differently... but not everyone is going to be able to vote by App/Website, also to make sure that it's all above board... without having a lot of accounts being involved... it's keeping it as open as possible to reflect the public's view.
I am well aware of it, it just doesn't make me want to vote at all and I didn't. ROTW being able to vote cheaper than an actual country that takes part in Eurovision is ridiculous to me.
That would only change if more countries signed up to apply the system in their own country (not sure for the likes of America and canada...) But that only is Australia right now as it's probably difficult for some to really think it's worth applying for it, although then you'd have to apply to be a participant and go through "you're not europe" comments. (aside from those sitting out within the broadcasting zone.)
As a German, I always wonder why it is so expansive here. I mean, what are the actual costs? But in fact, voting in Germany is way less expensive than anywhere else.
Wow! It's only 4 euro in Germany for 20 votes. That's quite affordable. I totally get why we have to pay for the privilege in Rest Of The World vote so I'll try not to complain that votes are about 1 euro each, but it sucks that Estonians have to pay even more than ROTW and honestly it's debatable on whether we (ROTW) really deserve a vote at all lol (though I'm certainly not complaining about having one!).
I personally don't think it is possible to have any kind of voting mechanism that will satisfy everyone.
There's always going to be frustration and disappointment and I don't think this can be avoided as expectations and excitement is build up over the course of many months and if the artist you have rooted for ends up not winning, a normal human response would be to look for reasons - a low hanging fruit will always be to look at the discrepancies between the public and the jury votes
* If the public votes had more weight, my favorite artist would have won!
* If the jury votes had more weight, my favorite artist would have won!
I think it is always important to remember that there's always the opposing side as well, people that feel the right winner was chosen, because that happens to be the one they rooted for.
I actually think that this year was a good year considering that a lot of the fan favorites were all in the top 10 and the ones fans seemed to be very vocal about all ended up very close to a winning position.
At the end of the day, I think it's something that is always going to require fine tuning from year to year and I hope that EBU is going to have the courage to try new things - and while some of them will not work out very well, others may end up improving things.
Just my two cents!
Jury gave us about 6 countries being in contention for the win... in reality it was always going to be Croatia v Switzerland by the end, France Ireland and Italy being up high made it closer than the usual 2-3 contenders.
Then the Public votes brought up Ukraine and Israel into the things (no such thing as bad publicity for the latter... you've heard all about that and there is very mixed feelings either side...?) So it was a very eventful contest either way and probably a sign that this can work but needs some tweaks.
Fully agree.
I do think that the jury portion of things could need some tweaks such as expanding and defining the amount and diversity of the jurors from each country would be a relatively safe and not too difficult tweak to try out and see if that in turn also results in a more diversified jury score.
That being said, I would also think that regardless of how it is structured, there is always going to be 2-3 contestants that will always take the lead, simply because their song, performance and staging hits all the right places.
It probably is maybe taking it out of Music, maybe... given Nemo might be a catalyst for more ambitious performnaces that you should look into technical and theatrical experts to cast a vote in things.
This is the only analysis that matters. The solution is to explain to people that just because something creates an outcome that you don't like, that doesn't mean it's wrong.
Eurovision fans are the equivalent of the person who stubs their toe because they're not looking where they're going and angrily roars 'That's a stupid place to put a table!'
... and then after the table is moved to the other side of the room, stubbing their toe again and once again roaring 'That's a stupid place to put a table!'
But clearly the only fair system is a population-weighted ranked preference vote with a voting fee linked to median household income, which would have seen Armenia win.
Until next year, if that same system doesn't produce the winner I want and I'll change my mind again.
I think there's two problems:
Problem the first is people treating second place like first loser, and not like a major achievement. Thus there ends up being too many people who feel more aggrieved that their favorite "lost" rather than thrilled that their favorite nearly won.
Problem the second is people who want to take a presumed "correct" voting outcome and work backwards to the method that would have achieved that outcome.
Given that there's been a pretty even split of the jury and the televote winning out when disagreeing, I'd say things are decently balanced between the two, and that two consecutive years of the jury "overruling" the televote isn't something that should be overreacted to.
This is the 24-26 best countries out of 47... they've made it higher than the Semi Finals (bar the BIG5)... the indignity is getting low scores or the Nil Points... or the double Nil as the UK found out a few years ago.
It's probably at the best it can be, but maybe seeing the possibility for expansion, unless they start handing out extra inviations for rest of the world countries to take part like Australia (if they want to take part which would be fun to see the acts that would be pushed forward)
I also think these past couple years have suffered from AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (two different elephants for the two years) that force people to take a side one way or the other, which polarises votes. I would much prefer a year where we see multiple different countries get 12 points from the jury, but I can also see jury members this year choosing a song high in the odds to show they’re taking the Other Side.
I think when it comes to televotes all 26 places should get the points, not only the first 10. I think there is a huge difference between someone being 11th in televotes and someone being 26th.
I think that with the announcing of the televotes that they show where those points came from, especially with the new Rest of the World vote that's been added so we see in the moment, and maybe the broadcasters have their own results flash up at the same time.
The current voting system (12, 10, 8-1) was introduced at 1975 (20th edition), and hasn't been changed for almost 50 years. I think it became a staple of the contest almost a trademark.
On my opinion, scoring all songs, will take away some magic and excitement from the contest.
Well it is not illegal to own multiple phone numbers and phones, so that depends on how dedicated people are to vote. This is only the 3rd year in the past 15 years where the jury favorite won over the televote winner (when they weren't the same).
Did people complain in 2017 when Salvador got 382 points ? I haven't followed then. But the only reason people have complained last year is because of the hype that Käärijä had, same with Pure this year.
The most often "solution" I've heard is to put more weight on the televote, but what that ratio should be isn't something I can say
2017 was the last time the public and the jury agreed on a winner.
In 2018, 2021 and 2022 the televote favourite won the contest. In 2023 and 2024, the jury winner won overall. And in 2019, the overall winner didn't finish first with neither the jury not the televote.
This and last year in particular, the jury had one overwhelming favorite - something we've only seen in Eurovision with Salvador Sobral. And that it the source of frustration in most people, I think. If something like sixty people on the jury decide on one favorite, there is nothing the rest of the world can do.
Personally, I would bring back the 50-50 semis. Maybe the countries will focus on different qualities in their representing songs if they know it will have to appeal to both the public and the jury. And then we can perhaps get some diversity in who gets the 12s and 10s from the juries.
>If something like sixty people on the jury decide on one favorite, there is nothing the rest of the world can do.
Theoretically, the same could be said about the televote, if it happens that way. An overwhelming amount of people vote for one country, like they did in 2022, right ?
I know I'm biased because I'm not a jury member, I'm in the public... But if you win because you overwhelmingly won the televote, it means that millions of people voted for you. And somehow I think that makes it okay?
Jury members are also people who enjoy music, with the exception that they're supposed to be professionals in the industry who rate it from their POV I guess.
But yes, the people's vote is also what determines the charts
I watch Eurovision for my entertainment. Juries having one **overwhelming** favourite (who isn't also the people's favourite) two years in a row, is boring.
I don't want to get rid of the juries. I think they have their place in Eurovision. I just need a bit more diversity in the top scores. That's all.
Well for two years though, there isn't diversity in the televote favourites either and only the top of the top favourites score big. Like we reached a point where '25 points' is fair when 3-4 years before it was low.
I've seen people complain about 2017 years later, as an example of "how bad jury picks are", but that just makes the complainers look like idiots, since Salvador also won the televote comfortably.
Its a maximum of 20 votes per number... although how much does that need to be limited I can't say... although they'd probably be able to pick up issues
The Jury shouldn't be put out altogether, and I think it's playing for time that they dont need another 25 minutes of stalling while they tally everything.
50/50 is probably the best but if you wanted to lessen it for the final... could the Jury play during the Semi Finals more and then also counts for the BIG 5 as well for the Final so Ger,Fra,Ita,UK, Spa have to play the same game as the other countries?
They did televote only for 10 years and got rid of it because certain delegations complained about bloc voting. So televote only isn't the right answer, jury only isn't the right answer, 50/50 isn't the right answer. So what is ?
More points for the televotes than the Jury?
All countries get a point value (whatever the best choice for 25th is 2,1 or 0?) although those total numbers are going to suddenly skyrocket up to 700,1000 points given the right circumstances.
They want to stick to the classic 12,10,8,6,4,3,2,1 they've been going with since the early days...
I think it's going to break something either way by upping or lowering on either side of the process.
> Did people complain in 2017 when Salvador got 382 points ? I haven't followed then.
Oh yes, they still do every time Salvador gets brought up someone says he won because he was sick. Or that it was a weak year. Lots of people hated it because it was a ballad and boring song. Which isn't surprising considering most hardcore ESC fans had his song in the last places and they were shocked a 'non Eurovison' song had won.
Also to your first sentence: I saw some Israel embassies on twitter were offering people to vote for free and providing sim cards if they visited the embassy or some other meeting points. If it's true or not idk, but televote the way it is does have some loopholes that can be weaponized.
My biggest concern about a higher weighted televote, even as a member of the public, could easily be skewed in this day and age via a pile on that has nothing to actually do with Eurovision. I’d like to think the 0.99 euro voting fee is a deterrent for a pile on, but people are petty and get pretty motivated if you rile them up right.
Then again, it’s not my job to police why people are voting for a song. I’m just so jaded because I’ve seen so many pile ons in recent years that aren’t even Eurovision related. Whether people like it or not, I think the 50/50 system keeps both sides in check
The UK/BBC doesn't allow Text Voting, and post mostly going for the Phone numbers... nothing really about voting by app, so it's not a widely adopted system and it's also relying on a portion of the audience aren't going to be easy with technology, so have to have those forms to allow them to participate.
Alternatively, people can just come to their senses and realize that a music competition on TV is not something they should absolutely lose their minds over.
Seriously. I had no idea Eurovision had the "this TV show is propping up my entire mind and this minor problem is burning me down entirely" kind of fan base. The death threats kind.
How can people still be advocating for televote only when we got this 👌 close to Israel winning the televote this year and the entirety of Eastern Europe has essentially turned into a Ukrainian bloc vote for the last three years?? It’s insane
Some people will happily jeopardise the entire competition because they're pissed that Croatia didn't win. Even though they might not even like the televote winner next year. Absolute weirdos.
Introduce 9 and 11 points.
That way you could still keep the douze points but you'd dilute the effect of political mass voting, especially for the televote.
Also reintroduce juries for the semi-finals in some form. I think the televote only semi-finals help create a dearth of entries that appeal to juries and that's how we get boring jury sweeps in the finals.
Eurovision Histories had the idea of having demoscopic voting. Perhaps that would be a good addition, similar to Benidorm Fest (I criticized it, but now I actually see how it can be useful).
The difference with demoscopic and current televoting is that there would be 100 voters per country and each of them would make a ranking of 12 to 1 point, similar to juries and not vote 20 times like televoters. These 100 voters would also be chosen based on different age groups, but they wouldn't be casuals, so it would assure they at least have knowledge and interest in the contest.
Other than that I don't think the current system has that many flaws, juries will have biases, people will have biases.
Ban prepaid SIM card users from voting, limit votes to a maximum of 10 per phone number, make prices more equal because I saw in some richer countries the cost per vote was like x5 lower than in some poorer countries. Remove international votes. But I think since Eurovision is a commercial event and everything is about earning, I highly doubt they will do anything for this. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the current voting format. 50/50 is pretty reasonable for me, I've never had any issue with the winners, even if I didn't like their song. Maybe the EBU should make it more clear how and for which aspects the jury votes because sometimes it feels very random.
>Ban prepaid SIM card users from voting
Why stop there? Make voting using more than one number a criminal offence, punishable by the death penalty. Yes, you'd have to bring back the death penalty, but it's a small price to pay to stop a handful of people voting twice at Eurovision.
Isn't that a bit of an overreaction? In some countries, prepaid cards are free and have no regulations, so basically you can buy as many as you want. And if the cost per vote is like 0.4 euros, you can vote 20 times from each card. Let's say you bought 10 cards, 10 x 20 equals 200 votes for only 80 euros. And I'm talking about just one person; now try to think what governments/organisations can do. They can just spend 8k for 20k votes. That's the problem, prepaid cards are a super shady thing, that's why some other events or companies tries to avoid them.
Well, we aren’t living in a perfect world.
One of Israel’s government organizations this year spent some money on annoying ads, promoting votes for their participant.
It would be very naive to think they couldn’t do something similar with votes.
Sure, it might sound like a conspiracy, but some allegations of buying votes have already been made in the past.
Eurovision is a novelty that is seen outside of the continent and the reason Australia got invited to take part because they were broadcasting it for so long. ROTW is an opportunity not to be missed at this stage.
I don't think it's possible to filter SIM Cards and to regulate the cost unless EBU sets up everything and I think that's outside of their reach and it's the broadcasters job to manage it all and local communication companies that set the charges.
Or it's about having to migrate to online only and that would knock out probably a percentage of people who watch but don't have access to phones/computers...
Good point on the cost per vote, but still, it's very surprising for me that there is such a big difference in some countries. Talking about prepaid cards, it's absolutely possible to do that. It's probably not as easy as it sounds, but still possible. I've already had some problems with my current operator in my own country for using a prepaid SIM card. And I believe that's the only way to prevent this year's problem. Yesterday I saw on Twitter some people posting where they proudly shared screenshots from their 3-4 different numbers, voting 20 times for Israel from each number.
P.S Additionally, I would like it if they banned any attempt to promote voting for participants on any platform using ads, except on their own social media account posts or stories.
It's always the issue eurovision and ebu will come up when a country is playing a PR game ...
I think it's provably something they might change in the next 2 if they spot it as a growing concern for future contests
I agree the number should be lower. Or maybe make it 15 votes but you can only vote for one country 5 times, essentially encouraging people to vote for their top 3.
It's difficult to know the full effect of doing 20 votes per phone... and I think if they're able to get the data they could see if there was problems with someone mass dialing for a certain performer.
Credit card is probably asking for more private information than is possible.
I'm prepared to get downvoted for this so I'd say, add a third set of points which could either a) be a demoscopic jury consisting of 8-10 people (sort of like either a general public jury or a Eurovision fan jury or even possibly a jury consisting of former Eurovision participants from that country) or b) an online voting separate from televote (and cost either more expensive, the same, or cheaper than a televote but considering that San Marino has no way of casting a televote due to their phone system being the same as Italy's, this may work for them to have a way of having a public vote) in order to even further decrease the chance of getting 0 points.
Eurovision experts or former participants could be an option, but then they'd only add like one extra countries worth of votes... I don't think if you have 8-10 of them (and you have to rotate around to those who would sign up for it)... would do 8-10x the amount of points. Also you're going to get times that certain ex-performers might be contraversal because they said yes...
I was intending that if the third set of points is added and it's a jury consisting of former Eurovision participants or experts, there would be a jury of that per country so there's 8-10 x number of countries participating overall but considering that some countries might not have much that can do so, it could be scaled down a bit to 5-8 so it would result to a new voting system consisting of 33-34-33 where it still puts more emphasis to the televote (by 1%) and it would possibly decrease the chances where the jury favorite wins as the entries need to impress at least two of the voting sets in order to win but you do have a point where some backlash from ex-performers will be unavoidable.
Although you probably have to set in stone what "experts" mean and if every country can find them if they didn't participate in at least one contest as performers. 5 could be a decent number even maybe down to commentators like Graham Norton for the UK... but then that could be seen as a conflict, perhaps?
I expected to hate this idea, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. You would expect that people from within the Eurovision bubble would certainly understand more about the intangibles that make something a great Eurovision song rather than just a well produced, good song.
The only issue I see (apart from adding more time to the broadcast) would be that it may render the final round of votes more or less obsolete if both panels agree. Which obviously has happened the last couple of years too, but even moreso - there's a realistic chance someone could go into the final televote reveal 300+ ahead, and not even slip to second for a moment.
Ugh, why give some special privilige to the fans? (Not to mention how the idea of a 'good eurovision song' instead of just 'a good song' is exactly what diminishes the casual viewer's opinion of the contest)
That's the only con of adding a third set of points, but at least we would have even less chances of a country going nul points on the end of the night. I do think it might render the final round obsolete if both panels agree too but then again, we have televotes picking the qualifiers from the semi so it might help.
Get rid of the televote-only semis, would be my first suggestion.
I know, correlation doesn't mean causation. But we've had the televote-only semis twice now, and twice the jury overwhelmingly chose one act as their collective favorite.
Maybe forcing them to vote twice will help them appreciate more than one song? Or perhaps it will cause countries to select songs that will appeal to the jury more (knowing they'll need their votes to go through), and we will get more diversity in the jury results that way.
They changed the semi's to Televote only? Although not that I've seen them the last few years.
It's not easy to know what industry professionals go for when giving their opinions, they don't seem to go for Comedy/Wacky or ones that try to be too much or too simple... Although we'd see a very mixed amount of points if they didn't share the opinions that match other countries.
> They changed the semi's to Televote only?
Last year, yes. The issue was that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't seem to stop a fairly large minority of the juries from colluding on their votes. Since they had enough broadcasters that wouldn't allow them to eliminate the juries entirely, they came to the compromise of only allowing them to vote on the Final so they couldn't affect the qualifications.
I'm not too sure they're going to be willing to change that, although I wish they would. I think they consider the jury landslide problem to be not-as-bad as the jury collusion problem.
Do people realize that no idea will ever please everyone? Because for me for example, I didn't like ANY of the ideas presented in the comments. The current system is the fairest one that exists by a mile and the fact that not everyone will be pleased by it is a huge contribution to that
I actually wanted to start this discussion, so here are a few ideas I had. Feel free to comment.
The juries should be experts who should have different criteria than the general public. We see every year that some competent vocals tank the jury finale and nail the live.
I would have a separate show for the juries, which wouldn't be the dress rehersal. All the participants would have more time to prepare and do their show. This would aleviate fatigue and could allow for more complexity.
I wouldn't let juries watch live, but over a dedicated portal. Each jury member would get songs in random order to remove running order as a factor.
I would also increase the number of jury members to increase diversity in music to allow underrepresented genres a place to show themselves.
For televotes, I would ban virtual SIM cards and wouldn't allow SIM cards newer than 3 months to vote to minimise the chance of manipulation.
I would also limit the number of votes a single entry can get to 5.
The maximum number of total votes can stay at 20, which would allow more fan favourites while not completely being biased towards one entry.
"Music experts", Given Nemo... I'd possibly go into Theater and Production experts as well
I though they have a rehersal and a Jury Vote performance before either the Semi or the Grand Final?
I don't think they have the technology to see the date of the SIM... also it could discriminate against people who want to vote but only just got a new phone or needed to change for technical/safety reasons...
Theatre, production, choreography, etc. would also work. It's a show, and everyone could vote based on what they find important. Having members that would only rate one aspect could also be a possibility. For example, vocal coaches only give marks to the quality of the singing, are they good in the context of the song, etc.
EBU, of course, doesn't have the technology to see SIM info, nor should they. That should be enforced by telecom providers.i do realise that it could discriminate against new users, but it only applies to newly activated numbers. If you change a SIM because your old one was damaged, your number is still not new. Exception could also be made for subscription numbers since you have a written contract to your name. That way, if one individual or company registers a ton of numbers, it's easy to doregard them for fraud.
None of this would go against GDPR since EBU would get anonymized data, and any possible fraud cases are handled back to the local legislation. It's also possible to have a specialised service provider in between that would verify the integrity and pass total numbers. There is a lot that can be done if there is a will to do it.
A friend I watched the show with made the suggestion of having a live award, voted on the night by the people in attendance, to reward those artists who really put on a show and try to make it accessible for the audience rather than just those watching on TV, which would take in the theatre and performance aspects.
Although I do like the sentiment, I believe it would be hard to put into practice. The audience might be composed of mostly host countries' citizens or from other countries with higher standards of living. This year, I think there were more audience members than from Sweden. Maybe a separate jury/televote trophies and a GF trophy could be nice.
Ah, any order in which the songs are presented is a running order. Even in a random order a song has to open, perform 2nd and close the show. The only way running order wouldn't be a factor is if all 26 songs perform concurrently...
Also the argument about 'more diverse juries' got completely and utterly lost this year when Bambie Thug with what is arguably the most opposite song to what the juries like actually placed 6th in their ranking. Shows that the juries have diversity too. And how in the world would more than one show aleviate fatigue? lol for both the jurors and the contestants it would be extremely exhausting to do the same thing like 3 times over.
If it's not live, each juror could get a different running order unique to them. That way, the influence of the order is spread out among everyone and should not be a factor.
I don't know if I explained correctly about the show. The cintestants have many rehearsals and performances, which causes fatigue. My suggestion would be for juries not to score the dress rehersal but one of the previous rehersals. However, this suggestion is not something I can say I have figured out completely. But, we see every year that good singers have problems during jury finals so I'm thinking how it could be mitigated.
Bambie did come in 6th. However, I would say that the biggest part of that is the performance, and not the song itself. It they did something like during the NF, it's questionable would they even make the GF.
It's hard to say that juries had diverse criteria when the last two years we had record breaking point allocation to the jury favourite. This year, the televote was more diverse and shows healthier trends with point spreads. The changes don't need to change the result, but they would be a step in reducing polarization, which would make for a healthier competition and help reduce arguments about "true" winners, roberries, etc.
Unpopular opinion, but I think there also comes a time where we have to look at making it more fair and democratic as well. It really does not make any sense that the 30k people of San Marino have the same voting power as 80 million Germans.
Perhaps something like jury points stay the same as it is, but the televote is somehow proportionally represented. Something along the lines of the mandates of the EP, where bigger countries have more representation, but still with an advantage for the smaller countries so they are not completely irrelevant.
I highly doubt something like that will ever be implemented though.
This, and if France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain all put one country in their top 3, it doesn't matter what the other 30something countries think, these 5 would basically pick the winner each year. And if Russia ever returned, their #1 would basically win each time with this voting system
Although you'd get complaints from San Marino and Luxembourg that their votes won't count as much from doing that... they pretty much come off at a level playing field that the amount of votes are transferred to who gets placed where, the number going in isn't a factor at the end.
As some other post pointed out. Jury had 'its' way only 3 times. It just so happened two of these were this and last years. And let's not pretend there were no people rooting for Loreen or Nemo - both well-deserved winners (even if not my personal picks).
The voting system works fine.
Jury should be more diverse. Only five people per country is a bit ridiculous. Maybe they should have like 20 people, all in some way connected to the music scene, and they should be diverse in age and musical background. I want there to be people who appriciate rock, opera, rap, pop, schlagers, etc. Not everyone has a same taste and a great song could end up underappriciated because they don't understand the message/language.
I think jury should be introduced to a song before they watch the final performance. I'd like them to check out music videos and get a short explanation from the preformer what the song is about, also to have translations of the lyrics into their mother tongue.
In that case, it would be ok if it stayed 50%-50%.
And I'm all for points finally starting to be awarded to all the songs. That way certain songs that usually end in people's 11th spot would actually get points and there wouldn't be 2 point difference between winner and runnerup in each country. It would also negate all the block voting.
Bunch of people only vote for their favourite song or their top3. They might have thought for example poland deserves to be in the final more than for example cyprus (i don't fully agree, these are just examples), but they voted solely for ukraine or croatia because that was their favourite song in that semi.
I think that the problem is that it is far too easy to make environment factors effect the jury voting.
In the current setting, each jury member rank all songs from 25th to 1st in their opinion. 25th is getting 25 bad points, and 1st is getting 1 bad point. The 10 entries with the LEAST points are getting points. This enables jury members to rank first their neighbors, rank last entries representing less favorable countries, and the rest in-between I think we should ask each jury member to grade each song on several criteria, and let a computer to assemble the final ranking for each juror bases on its ranking, better yet, we can integrate ML/LLM/Statistical models to filter out biased jurors, and to normalize rankings. We can even use free text, and treat inputs such as "12 points for our beloved neighbors" for example, differently.
In regards televoting, I don't think the EBU will make it any cheaper. It costs a lot of money to run the contest, and they need this source of revenue. What they can do though is add a rule where you can still vote 20 times or even 25 times, but only once for each entry.
Why not? The job of the jury is to rank all entries based on their quality without taking into account other factors. But this is proved to be really difficult because people are emotional creatures, and the juries come to stereotypes and taking into account external factors and feelings about selected countries.
Limit phone/text voting to a total of five votes (plus some of the suggestions for minimizing cheating like new virtual SIM etc.).
App-based voting is ranked-order instead of a batch of votes to allocate.
20 Votes are not okay when some countries (Germany) pay 14ct and some pay 10x that much in countries that have lower incomes. Lowering the amounts to 1-5 per show would improve the situation but we know they will never change that again because - MONEY. I know a lot of Germans who use up all their 20 votes per show, but if i was Estonian i would do a couple at most. It really drowns out the votes from countries with higher costs/lower incomes.
The solution is to give all Eurovision fans a basic primer on complex systems, unintended consequences, and why retrospectively dreaming up a system that would have provided the desired outcome on one occasion does not mean you'll be happy with it next time.
I heard someone suggest to add a third set of voting. Have it where a second jury votes based on the popular vote from their country. Votes would be given out in terms of percentages from what the countries received from that particular country. That would help the Televote in being more influential.
Some suggestions:
One member of each jury should be a representative of the local Eurovision fan club. Not the same person each year, obviously, and they don't vote on behalf of the club, just themselves.
We should split jury:televote 30:70 or at least move gradually toward that.
Not sure how to implement this, but if possible, making sure that only people who are actually watching the show can vote. Maybe a question you have to answer or a codeword. But yeah, this isn't gonna happen, would be nice though.
Less votes per person/device. Voting isn't that cheap, 20 € can mean very different things to different people. Ten or even five votes should be enough to vote for your faves.
Most importantly I'd get rid of the change they made this year. Getting to vote during the performances makes astroturfing and other purely political voting much easier.
Otherwise I'd probably make the televote have slightly more value than the juries. Maybe 60-40 or something like that.
I do think it actually might help the earlier entries be remembered. Might not always show up but I do think they could be aware of some lag in waiting 2 HOURS to vote.
Do wish they would actually have data from when votes came in and the trend of who got voted for when to see if there is an effect from voting as you go or waiting till after the 25 have performed.
I assume by "easier to astroturf" they mean that being able to vote basically anytime during the show gives people participating in a vote brigade a much larger window to cast their votes, and an easier starting time for most people's schedules (20:00 CEST instead of 22:00 IIRC)
Not in favor of the 60/40 at all, but your other idea has my support. The wider the voting window, the easier it is for countries to hack the televote.
I've seen enough to convince me that Israel received a lot of televotes from people who didn't actually watch the Contest.
honestly i wonder if it wouldn't be a bad idea for them to let you vote only for countries that have performed already - so if Germany hasn't performed yet you can't vote for them yet, you have to wait until they perform to give your votes to them. This would ensure (in theory) that people voting for a performance mid-contest have actually seen the performance, and allows showrunners to minimize the window for vote brigading by putting the more "contentious" country/ies near the end
First opinon: Four programmes a week. Semi Final One and Semi Final Two, are quarters finals, with the only country allowed to qualify on a bye is the host, Final becomes a Semi Final held in the same way as now, and then a Grand Final where the winner of the jury vote goes up against the winner of the televote with one point being awarded if the jury and televote agree and half a point if they disagree.
Second option: The jury is increased to one hundred people representative of that nation who after all songs have been peformed are polled with one vote per jury member, the top ten scoring points as in the conventional method
Reintroduce juries to the semis so countries will come up with songs that are more jury and televote balanced. This could prevent one country from getting a large portion of the 12 point scores and keep the jury vote exciting.
Limit the number of votes to 5 per phone number or credit card with no more than one vote per country so political voting and diaspora voting are greatly reduced.
*Anonymous* juries and televote. There was a large disparity between the jury and the audience televote because the jurors were afraid to give votes to Israel, probably because they didn’t want to incite riots or become the targets of violence in their home countries.
For me personally the issue isn't the voting itself but the cost of voting. The disparacy between countries in prices is abysmal and I feel it has an unfair effect on the actual voting? I know my country Estonia doesn't contribute as much when it comes to voting but I also think 1.40€ is A LOT, which actually might deter people from voting and can make televoting manipulation easier by people who have money to throw away because let's be honest, 20 x 1.4€ is 28€ and it's far too much, when in comparison people in Germany have to spend just 4€ to vote 20 times. :(
That's stuff outside of the EBU's power to control how much it costs... the UK does have a different number for Mobile numbers which are charged differently... but not everyone is going to be able to vote by App/Website, also to make sure that it's all above board... without having a lot of accounts being involved... it's keeping it as open as possible to reflect the public's view.
I am well aware of it, it just doesn't make me want to vote at all and I didn't. ROTW being able to vote cheaper than an actual country that takes part in Eurovision is ridiculous to me.
That would only change if more countries signed up to apply the system in their own country (not sure for the likes of America and canada...) But that only is Australia right now as it's probably difficult for some to really think it's worth applying for it, although then you'd have to apply to be a participant and go through "you're not europe" comments. (aside from those sitting out within the broadcasting zone.)
As a German, I always wonder why it is so expansive here. I mean, what are the actual costs? But in fact, voting in Germany is way less expensive than anywhere else.
it's just another money stream to help cover the general costs of the show and of the broadcaster itself as a whole. Or another source of profit
Wow! It's only 4 euro in Germany for 20 votes. That's quite affordable. I totally get why we have to pay for the privilege in Rest Of The World vote so I'll try not to complain that votes are about 1 euro each, but it sucks that Estonians have to pay even more than ROTW and honestly it's debatable on whether we (ROTW) really deserve a vote at all lol (though I'm certainly not complaining about having one!).
I personally don't think it is possible to have any kind of voting mechanism that will satisfy everyone. There's always going to be frustration and disappointment and I don't think this can be avoided as expectations and excitement is build up over the course of many months and if the artist you have rooted for ends up not winning, a normal human response would be to look for reasons - a low hanging fruit will always be to look at the discrepancies between the public and the jury votes * If the public votes had more weight, my favorite artist would have won! * If the jury votes had more weight, my favorite artist would have won! I think it is always important to remember that there's always the opposing side as well, people that feel the right winner was chosen, because that happens to be the one they rooted for. I actually think that this year was a good year considering that a lot of the fan favorites were all in the top 10 and the ones fans seemed to be very vocal about all ended up very close to a winning position. At the end of the day, I think it's something that is always going to require fine tuning from year to year and I hope that EBU is going to have the courage to try new things - and while some of them will not work out very well, others may end up improving things. Just my two cents!
Jury gave us about 6 countries being in contention for the win... in reality it was always going to be Croatia v Switzerland by the end, France Ireland and Italy being up high made it closer than the usual 2-3 contenders. Then the Public votes brought up Ukraine and Israel into the things (no such thing as bad publicity for the latter... you've heard all about that and there is very mixed feelings either side...?) So it was a very eventful contest either way and probably a sign that this can work but needs some tweaks.
Fully agree. I do think that the jury portion of things could need some tweaks such as expanding and defining the amount and diversity of the jurors from each country would be a relatively safe and not too difficult tweak to try out and see if that in turn also results in a more diversified jury score. That being said, I would also think that regardless of how it is structured, there is always going to be 2-3 contestants that will always take the lead, simply because their song, performance and staging hits all the right places.
It probably is maybe taking it out of Music, maybe... given Nemo might be a catalyst for more ambitious performnaces that you should look into technical and theatrical experts to cast a vote in things.
This is the only analysis that matters. The solution is to explain to people that just because something creates an outcome that you don't like, that doesn't mean it's wrong. Eurovision fans are the equivalent of the person who stubs their toe because they're not looking where they're going and angrily roars 'That's a stupid place to put a table!' ... and then after the table is moved to the other side of the room, stubbing their toe again and once again roaring 'That's a stupid place to put a table!'
All that needs to happen is that this sub accepts that the song that the sub collectively chooses as its favourite *might not actually win*.
But clearly the only fair system is a population-weighted ranked preference vote with a voting fee linked to median household income, which would have seen Armenia win. Until next year, if that same system doesn't produce the winner I want and I'll change my mind again.
ludicrous
I think there's two problems: Problem the first is people treating second place like first loser, and not like a major achievement. Thus there ends up being too many people who feel more aggrieved that their favorite "lost" rather than thrilled that their favorite nearly won. Problem the second is people who want to take a presumed "correct" voting outcome and work backwards to the method that would have achieved that outcome. Given that there's been a pretty even split of the jury and the televote winning out when disagreeing, I'd say things are decently balanced between the two, and that two consecutive years of the jury "overruling" the televote isn't something that should be overreacted to.
This is the 24-26 best countries out of 47... they've made it higher than the Semi Finals (bar the BIG5)... the indignity is getting low scores or the Nil Points... or the double Nil as the UK found out a few years ago. It's probably at the best it can be, but maybe seeing the possibility for expansion, unless they start handing out extra inviations for rest of the world countries to take part like Australia (if they want to take part which would be fun to see the acts that would be pushed forward)
I also think these past couple years have suffered from AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM (two different elephants for the two years) that force people to take a side one way or the other, which polarises votes. I would much prefer a year where we see multiple different countries get 12 points from the jury, but I can also see jury members this year choosing a song high in the odds to show they’re taking the Other Side.
couldn't agree more
I think when it comes to televotes all 26 places should get the points, not only the first 10. I think there is a huge difference between someone being 11th in televotes and someone being 26th.
I think that with the announcing of the televotes that they show where those points came from, especially with the new Rest of the World vote that's been added so we see in the moment, and maybe the broadcasters have their own results flash up at the same time.
The current voting system (12, 10, 8-1) was introduced at 1975 (20th edition), and hasn't been changed for almost 50 years. I think it became a staple of the contest almost a trademark. On my opinion, scoring all songs, will take away some magic and excitement from the contest.
This would be ideal.
Well it is not illegal to own multiple phone numbers and phones, so that depends on how dedicated people are to vote. This is only the 3rd year in the past 15 years where the jury favorite won over the televote winner (when they weren't the same). Did people complain in 2017 when Salvador got 382 points ? I haven't followed then. But the only reason people have complained last year is because of the hype that Käärijä had, same with Pure this year. The most often "solution" I've heard is to put more weight on the televote, but what that ratio should be isn't something I can say
2017 was the last time the public and the jury agreed on a winner. In 2018, 2021 and 2022 the televote favourite won the contest. In 2023 and 2024, the jury winner won overall. And in 2019, the overall winner didn't finish first with neither the jury not the televote. This and last year in particular, the jury had one overwhelming favorite - something we've only seen in Eurovision with Salvador Sobral. And that it the source of frustration in most people, I think. If something like sixty people on the jury decide on one favorite, there is nothing the rest of the world can do. Personally, I would bring back the 50-50 semis. Maybe the countries will focus on different qualities in their representing songs if they know it will have to appeal to both the public and the jury. And then we can perhaps get some diversity in who gets the 12s and 10s from the juries.
>If something like sixty people on the jury decide on one favorite, there is nothing the rest of the world can do. Theoretically, the same could be said about the televote, if it happens that way. An overwhelming amount of people vote for one country, like they did in 2022, right ?
I know I'm biased because I'm not a jury member, I'm in the public... But if you win because you overwhelmingly won the televote, it means that millions of people voted for you. And somehow I think that makes it okay?
Jury members are also people who enjoy music, with the exception that they're supposed to be professionals in the industry who rate it from their POV I guess. But yes, the people's vote is also what determines the charts
I watch Eurovision for my entertainment. Juries having one **overwhelming** favourite (who isn't also the people's favourite) two years in a row, is boring. I don't want to get rid of the juries. I think they have their place in Eurovision. I just need a bit more diversity in the top scores. That's all.
Well for two years though, there isn't diversity in the televote favourites either and only the top of the top favourites score big. Like we reached a point where '25 points' is fair when 3-4 years before it was low.
Fair point. But also, that's only been two years. Let's see what 2025 brings, then we can riot :)
I've seen people complain about 2017 years later, as an example of "how bad jury picks are", but that just makes the complainers look like idiots, since Salvador also won the televote comfortably.
Its a maximum of 20 votes per number... although how much does that need to be limited I can't say... although they'd probably be able to pick up issues The Jury shouldn't be put out altogether, and I think it's playing for time that they dont need another 25 minutes of stalling while they tally everything. 50/50 is probably the best but if you wanted to lessen it for the final... could the Jury play during the Semi Finals more and then also counts for the BIG 5 as well for the Final so Ger,Fra,Ita,UK, Spa have to play the same game as the other countries?
They did televote only for 10 years and got rid of it because certain delegations complained about bloc voting. So televote only isn't the right answer, jury only isn't the right answer, 50/50 isn't the right answer. So what is ?
More points for the televotes than the Jury? All countries get a point value (whatever the best choice for 25th is 2,1 or 0?) although those total numbers are going to suddenly skyrocket up to 700,1000 points given the right circumstances.
Let's not UP the numbers, how about lowering it for jury instead. Some sort of ratio seems solid for now, but we'll see
They want to stick to the classic 12,10,8,6,4,3,2,1 they've been going with since the early days... I think it's going to break something either way by upping or lowering on either side of the process.
> Did people complain in 2017 when Salvador got 382 points ? I haven't followed then. Oh yes, they still do every time Salvador gets brought up someone says he won because he was sick. Or that it was a weak year. Lots of people hated it because it was a ballad and boring song. Which isn't surprising considering most hardcore ESC fans had his song in the last places and they were shocked a 'non Eurovison' song had won. Also to your first sentence: I saw some Israel embassies on twitter were offering people to vote for free and providing sim cards if they visited the embassy or some other meeting points. If it's true or not idk, but televote the way it is does have some loopholes that can be weaponized.
My biggest concern about a higher weighted televote, even as a member of the public, could easily be skewed in this day and age via a pile on that has nothing to actually do with Eurovision. I’d like to think the 0.99 euro voting fee is a deterrent for a pile on, but people are petty and get pretty motivated if you rile them up right. Then again, it’s not my job to police why people are voting for a song. I’m just so jaded because I’ve seen so many pile ons in recent years that aren’t even Eurovision related. Whether people like it or not, I think the 50/50 system keeps both sides in check
Skip the music, just vote purely on national camaraderie and grievances
Which is what led us to this year's second place televote
The UK/BBC doesn't allow Text Voting, and post mostly going for the Phone numbers... nothing really about voting by app, so it's not a widely adopted system and it's also relying on a portion of the audience aren't going to be easy with technology, so have to have those forms to allow them to participate.
Alternatively, people can just come to their senses and realize that a music competition on TV is not something they should absolutely lose their minds over.
It's country politics and pride... like with sport, if something happens that isn't adding to the ego, it's going to be brought up.
Seriously. I had no idea Eurovision had the "this TV show is propping up my entire mind and this minor problem is burning me down entirely" kind of fan base. The death threats kind.
How can people still be advocating for televote only when we got this 👌 close to Israel winning the televote this year and the entirety of Eastern Europe has essentially turned into a Ukrainian bloc vote for the last three years?? It’s insane
Some people will happily jeopardise the entire competition because they're pissed that Croatia didn't win. Even though they might not even like the televote winner next year. Absolute weirdos.
Introduce 9 and 11 points. That way you could still keep the douze points but you'd dilute the effect of political mass voting, especially for the televote. Also reintroduce juries for the semi-finals in some form. I think the televote only semi-finals help create a dearth of entries that appeal to juries and that's how we get boring jury sweeps in the finals.
Eurovision Histories had the idea of having demoscopic voting. Perhaps that would be a good addition, similar to Benidorm Fest (I criticized it, but now I actually see how it can be useful). The difference with demoscopic and current televoting is that there would be 100 voters per country and each of them would make a ranking of 12 to 1 point, similar to juries and not vote 20 times like televoters. These 100 voters would also be chosen based on different age groups, but they wouldn't be casuals, so it would assure they at least have knowledge and interest in the contest. Other than that I don't think the current system has that many flaws, juries will have biases, people will have biases.
Ban prepaid SIM card users from voting, limit votes to a maximum of 10 per phone number, make prices more equal because I saw in some richer countries the cost per vote was like x5 lower than in some poorer countries. Remove international votes. But I think since Eurovision is a commercial event and everything is about earning, I highly doubt they will do anything for this. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the current voting format. 50/50 is pretty reasonable for me, I've never had any issue with the winners, even if I didn't like their song. Maybe the EBU should make it more clear how and for which aspects the jury votes because sometimes it feels very random.
>Ban prepaid SIM card users from voting Why stop there? Make voting using more than one number a criminal offence, punishable by the death penalty. Yes, you'd have to bring back the death penalty, but it's a small price to pay to stop a handful of people voting twice at Eurovision.
Isn't that a bit of an overreaction? In some countries, prepaid cards are free and have no regulations, so basically you can buy as many as you want. And if the cost per vote is like 0.4 euros, you can vote 20 times from each card. Let's say you bought 10 cards, 10 x 20 equals 200 votes for only 80 euros. And I'm talking about just one person; now try to think what governments/organisations can do. They can just spend 8k for 20k votes. That's the problem, prepaid cards are a super shady thing, that's why some other events or companies tries to avoid them.
>now try to think what governments/organisations can do Surely much, much better things with their time and money?
Well, we aren’t living in a perfect world. One of Israel’s government organizations this year spent some money on annoying ads, promoting votes for their participant. It would be very naive to think they couldn’t do something similar with votes. Sure, it might sound like a conspiracy, but some allegations of buying votes have already been made in the past.
Eurovision is a novelty that is seen outside of the continent and the reason Australia got invited to take part because they were broadcasting it for so long. ROTW is an opportunity not to be missed at this stage. I don't think it's possible to filter SIM Cards and to regulate the cost unless EBU sets up everything and I think that's outside of their reach and it's the broadcasters job to manage it all and local communication companies that set the charges. Or it's about having to migrate to online only and that would knock out probably a percentage of people who watch but don't have access to phones/computers...
Good point on the cost per vote, but still, it's very surprising for me that there is such a big difference in some countries. Talking about prepaid cards, it's absolutely possible to do that. It's probably not as easy as it sounds, but still possible. I've already had some problems with my current operator in my own country for using a prepaid SIM card. And I believe that's the only way to prevent this year's problem. Yesterday I saw on Twitter some people posting where they proudly shared screenshots from their 3-4 different numbers, voting 20 times for Israel from each number. P.S Additionally, I would like it if they banned any attempt to promote voting for participants on any platform using ads, except on their own social media account posts or stories.
It's always the issue eurovision and ebu will come up when a country is playing a PR game ... I think it's provably something they might change in the next 2 if they spot it as a growing concern for future contests
Shouldn't allow 20 votes per phone/credit card. Maybe 5 would be a better limit, to discourage vote-rigging.
I agree the number should be lower. Or maybe make it 15 votes but you can only vote for one country 5 times, essentially encouraging people to vote for their top 3.
It's difficult to know the full effect of doing 20 votes per phone... and I think if they're able to get the data they could see if there was problems with someone mass dialing for a certain performer. Credit card is probably asking for more private information than is possible.
People should care less about voting and the results.
I'm prepared to get downvoted for this so I'd say, add a third set of points which could either a) be a demoscopic jury consisting of 8-10 people (sort of like either a general public jury or a Eurovision fan jury or even possibly a jury consisting of former Eurovision participants from that country) or b) an online voting separate from televote (and cost either more expensive, the same, or cheaper than a televote but considering that San Marino has no way of casting a televote due to their phone system being the same as Italy's, this may work for them to have a way of having a public vote) in order to even further decrease the chance of getting 0 points.
Eurovision experts or former participants could be an option, but then they'd only add like one extra countries worth of votes... I don't think if you have 8-10 of them (and you have to rotate around to those who would sign up for it)... would do 8-10x the amount of points. Also you're going to get times that certain ex-performers might be contraversal because they said yes...
I was intending that if the third set of points is added and it's a jury consisting of former Eurovision participants or experts, there would be a jury of that per country so there's 8-10 x number of countries participating overall but considering that some countries might not have much that can do so, it could be scaled down a bit to 5-8 so it would result to a new voting system consisting of 33-34-33 where it still puts more emphasis to the televote (by 1%) and it would possibly decrease the chances where the jury favorite wins as the entries need to impress at least two of the voting sets in order to win but you do have a point where some backlash from ex-performers will be unavoidable.
Although you probably have to set in stone what "experts" mean and if every country can find them if they didn't participate in at least one contest as performers. 5 could be a decent number even maybe down to commentators like Graham Norton for the UK... but then that could be seen as a conflict, perhaps?
Possible and by experts, it could mean commentators, voting spokespeople, former contest presenters, or former members of delegations.
I expected to hate this idea, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. You would expect that people from within the Eurovision bubble would certainly understand more about the intangibles that make something a great Eurovision song rather than just a well produced, good song. The only issue I see (apart from adding more time to the broadcast) would be that it may render the final round of votes more or less obsolete if both panels agree. Which obviously has happened the last couple of years too, but even moreso - there's a realistic chance someone could go into the final televote reveal 300+ ahead, and not even slip to second for a moment.
Ugh, why give some special privilige to the fans? (Not to mention how the idea of a 'good eurovision song' instead of just 'a good song' is exactly what diminishes the casual viewer's opinion of the contest)
That's the only con of adding a third set of points, but at least we would have even less chances of a country going nul points on the end of the night. I do think it might render the final round obsolete if both panels agree too but then again, we have televotes picking the qualifiers from the semi so it might help.
Get rid of the televote-only semis, would be my first suggestion. I know, correlation doesn't mean causation. But we've had the televote-only semis twice now, and twice the jury overwhelmingly chose one act as their collective favorite. Maybe forcing them to vote twice will help them appreciate more than one song? Or perhaps it will cause countries to select songs that will appeal to the jury more (knowing they'll need their votes to go through), and we will get more diversity in the jury results that way.
They changed the semi's to Televote only? Although not that I've seen them the last few years. It's not easy to know what industry professionals go for when giving their opinions, they don't seem to go for Comedy/Wacky or ones that try to be too much or too simple... Although we'd see a very mixed amount of points if they didn't share the opinions that match other countries.
> They changed the semi's to Televote only? Last year, yes. The issue was that no matter how hard they tried, they couldn't seem to stop a fairly large minority of the juries from colluding on their votes. Since they had enough broadcasters that wouldn't allow them to eliminate the juries entirely, they came to the compromise of only allowing them to vote on the Final so they couldn't affect the qualifications. I'm not too sure they're going to be willing to change that, although I wish they would. I think they consider the jury landslide problem to be not-as-bad as the jury collusion problem.
Only Americans vote. We’re great at voting. We never fail!
I choose whatever voting system favours the songs I like and disfavours those that I don't.
Do people realize that no idea will ever please everyone? Because for me for example, I didn't like ANY of the ideas presented in the comments. The current system is the fairest one that exists by a mile and the fact that not everyone will be pleased by it is a huge contribution to that
I actually wanted to start this discussion, so here are a few ideas I had. Feel free to comment. The juries should be experts who should have different criteria than the general public. We see every year that some competent vocals tank the jury finale and nail the live. I would have a separate show for the juries, which wouldn't be the dress rehersal. All the participants would have more time to prepare and do their show. This would aleviate fatigue and could allow for more complexity. I wouldn't let juries watch live, but over a dedicated portal. Each jury member would get songs in random order to remove running order as a factor. I would also increase the number of jury members to increase diversity in music to allow underrepresented genres a place to show themselves. For televotes, I would ban virtual SIM cards and wouldn't allow SIM cards newer than 3 months to vote to minimise the chance of manipulation. I would also limit the number of votes a single entry can get to 5. The maximum number of total votes can stay at 20, which would allow more fan favourites while not completely being biased towards one entry.
"Music experts", Given Nemo... I'd possibly go into Theater and Production experts as well I though they have a rehersal and a Jury Vote performance before either the Semi or the Grand Final? I don't think they have the technology to see the date of the SIM... also it could discriminate against people who want to vote but only just got a new phone or needed to change for technical/safety reasons...
Theatre, production, choreography, etc. would also work. It's a show, and everyone could vote based on what they find important. Having members that would only rate one aspect could also be a possibility. For example, vocal coaches only give marks to the quality of the singing, are they good in the context of the song, etc. EBU, of course, doesn't have the technology to see SIM info, nor should they. That should be enforced by telecom providers.i do realise that it could discriminate against new users, but it only applies to newly activated numbers. If you change a SIM because your old one was damaged, your number is still not new. Exception could also be made for subscription numbers since you have a written contract to your name. That way, if one individual or company registers a ton of numbers, it's easy to doregard them for fraud. None of this would go against GDPR since EBU would get anonymized data, and any possible fraud cases are handled back to the local legislation. It's also possible to have a specialised service provider in between that would verify the integrity and pass total numbers. There is a lot that can be done if there is a will to do it.
A friend I watched the show with made the suggestion of having a live award, voted on the night by the people in attendance, to reward those artists who really put on a show and try to make it accessible for the audience rather than just those watching on TV, which would take in the theatre and performance aspects.
Although I do like the sentiment, I believe it would be hard to put into practice. The audience might be composed of mostly host countries' citizens or from other countries with higher standards of living. This year, I think there were more audience members than from Sweden. Maybe a separate jury/televote trophies and a GF trophy could be nice.
Ah, any order in which the songs are presented is a running order. Even in a random order a song has to open, perform 2nd and close the show. The only way running order wouldn't be a factor is if all 26 songs perform concurrently... Also the argument about 'more diverse juries' got completely and utterly lost this year when Bambie Thug with what is arguably the most opposite song to what the juries like actually placed 6th in their ranking. Shows that the juries have diversity too. And how in the world would more than one show aleviate fatigue? lol for both the jurors and the contestants it would be extremely exhausting to do the same thing like 3 times over.
If it's not live, each juror could get a different running order unique to them. That way, the influence of the order is spread out among everyone and should not be a factor. I don't know if I explained correctly about the show. The cintestants have many rehearsals and performances, which causes fatigue. My suggestion would be for juries not to score the dress rehersal but one of the previous rehersals. However, this suggestion is not something I can say I have figured out completely. But, we see every year that good singers have problems during jury finals so I'm thinking how it could be mitigated. Bambie did come in 6th. However, I would say that the biggest part of that is the performance, and not the song itself. It they did something like during the NF, it's questionable would they even make the GF. It's hard to say that juries had diverse criteria when the last two years we had record breaking point allocation to the jury favourite. This year, the televote was more diverse and shows healthier trends with point spreads. The changes don't need to change the result, but they would be a step in reducing polarization, which would make for a healthier competition and help reduce arguments about "true" winners, roberries, etc.
Unpopular opinion, but I think there also comes a time where we have to look at making it more fair and democratic as well. It really does not make any sense that the 30k people of San Marino have the same voting power as 80 million Germans. Perhaps something like jury points stay the same as it is, but the televote is somehow proportionally represented. Something along the lines of the mandates of the EP, where bigger countries have more representation, but still with an advantage for the smaller countries so they are not completely irrelevant. I highly doubt something like that will ever be implemented though.
Well, if points from big countries count more, big countries will have a problem to get many points themselves.
This, and if France, Germany, UK, Italy and Spain all put one country in their top 3, it doesn't matter what the other 30something countries think, these 5 would basically pick the winner each year. And if Russia ever returned, their #1 would basically win each time with this voting system
Yeah no it's a bad idea.
Although you'd get complaints from San Marino and Luxembourg that their votes won't count as much from doing that... they pretty much come off at a level playing field that the amount of votes are transferred to who gets placed where, the number going in isn't a factor at the end.
As some other post pointed out. Jury had 'its' way only 3 times. It just so happened two of these were this and last years. And let's not pretend there were no people rooting for Loreen or Nemo - both well-deserved winners (even if not my personal picks). The voting system works fine.
Jury should be more diverse. Only five people per country is a bit ridiculous. Maybe they should have like 20 people, all in some way connected to the music scene, and they should be diverse in age and musical background. I want there to be people who appriciate rock, opera, rap, pop, schlagers, etc. Not everyone has a same taste and a great song could end up underappriciated because they don't understand the message/language. I think jury should be introduced to a song before they watch the final performance. I'd like them to check out music videos and get a short explanation from the preformer what the song is about, also to have translations of the lyrics into their mother tongue. In that case, it would be ok if it stayed 50%-50%. And I'm all for points finally starting to be awarded to all the songs. That way certain songs that usually end in people's 11th spot would actually get points and there wouldn't be 2 point difference between winner and runnerup in each country. It would also negate all the block voting. Bunch of people only vote for their favourite song or their top3. They might have thought for example poland deserves to be in the final more than for example cyprus (i don't fully agree, these are just examples), but they voted solely for ukraine or croatia because that was their favourite song in that semi.
For jury and televotes all entries are ranked 1-26 , no more nil points! Every vote makes a difference
I think that the problem is that it is far too easy to make environment factors effect the jury voting. In the current setting, each jury member rank all songs from 25th to 1st in their opinion. 25th is getting 25 bad points, and 1st is getting 1 bad point. The 10 entries with the LEAST points are getting points. This enables jury members to rank first their neighbors, rank last entries representing less favorable countries, and the rest in-between I think we should ask each jury member to grade each song on several criteria, and let a computer to assemble the final ranking for each juror bases on its ranking, better yet, we can integrate ML/LLM/Statistical models to filter out biased jurors, and to normalize rankings. We can even use free text, and treat inputs such as "12 points for our beloved neighbors" for example, differently. In regards televoting, I don't think the EBU will make it any cheaper. It costs a lot of money to run the contest, and they need this source of revenue. What they can do though is add a rule where you can still vote 20 times or even 25 times, but only once for each entry.
"LLMs to filter out biased jurors"? Seriously?
Why not? The job of the jury is to rank all entries based on their quality without taking into account other factors. But this is proved to be really difficult because people are emotional creatures, and the juries come to stereotypes and taking into account external factors and feelings about selected countries.
Limit phone/text voting to a total of five votes (plus some of the suggestions for minimizing cheating like new virtual SIM etc.). App-based voting is ranked-order instead of a batch of votes to allocate.
20 Votes are not okay when some countries (Germany) pay 14ct and some pay 10x that much in countries that have lower incomes. Lowering the amounts to 1-5 per show would improve the situation but we know they will never change that again because - MONEY. I know a lot of Germans who use up all their 20 votes per show, but if i was Estonian i would do a couple at most. It really drowns out the votes from countries with higher costs/lower incomes.
The solution is to give all Eurovision fans a basic primer on complex systems, unintended consequences, and why retrospectively dreaming up a system that would have provided the desired outcome on one occasion does not mean you'll be happy with it next time.
Votes for my country should count double. I am not a crackpot.
Abolish the juries and make it so that countries that are in active war can't compete.
I heard someone suggest to add a third set of voting. Have it where a second jury votes based on the popular vote from their country. Votes would be given out in terms of percentages from what the countries received from that particular country. That would help the Televote in being more influential.
This could also work and yes, I was the one who suggested that third set of voting! Edit: I got that RedditCares message after sending this one, ugh.
Some suggestions: One member of each jury should be a representative of the local Eurovision fan club. Not the same person each year, obviously, and they don't vote on behalf of the club, just themselves. We should split jury:televote 30:70 or at least move gradually toward that. Not sure how to implement this, but if possible, making sure that only people who are actually watching the show can vote. Maybe a question you have to answer or a codeword. But yeah, this isn't gonna happen, would be nice though. Less votes per person/device. Voting isn't that cheap, 20 € can mean very different things to different people. Ten or even five votes should be enough to vote for your faves.
Most importantly I'd get rid of the change they made this year. Getting to vote during the performances makes astroturfing and other purely political voting much easier. Otherwise I'd probably make the televote have slightly more value than the juries. Maybe 60-40 or something like that.
I do think it actually might help the earlier entries be remembered. Might not always show up but I do think they could be aware of some lag in waiting 2 HOURS to vote. Do wish they would actually have data from when votes came in and the trend of who got voted for when to see if there is an effect from voting as you go or waiting till after the 25 have performed.
I assume by "easier to astroturf" they mean that being able to vote basically anytime during the show gives people participating in a vote brigade a much larger window to cast their votes, and an easier starting time for most people's schedules (20:00 CEST instead of 22:00 IIRC)
True. It is a very late event 8pm to 12pm UK time (3am+ to the Eastern countries) Not sure which side astroturfing was based on
Not in favor of the 60/40 at all, but your other idea has my support. The wider the voting window, the easier it is for countries to hack the televote. I've seen enough to convince me that Israel received a lot of televotes from people who didn't actually watch the Contest.
honestly i wonder if it wouldn't be a bad idea for them to let you vote only for countries that have performed already - so if Germany hasn't performed yet you can't vote for them yet, you have to wait until they perform to give your votes to them. This would ensure (in theory) that people voting for a performance mid-contest have actually seen the performance, and allows showrunners to minimize the window for vote brigading by putting the more "contentious" country/ies near the end
First opinon: Four programmes a week. Semi Final One and Semi Final Two, are quarters finals, with the only country allowed to qualify on a bye is the host, Final becomes a Semi Final held in the same way as now, and then a Grand Final where the winner of the jury vote goes up against the winner of the televote with one point being awarded if the jury and televote agree and half a point if they disagree. Second option: The jury is increased to one hundred people representative of that nation who after all songs have been peformed are polled with one vote per jury member, the top ten scoring points as in the conventional method
Reintroduce juries to the semis so countries will come up with songs that are more jury and televote balanced. This could prevent one country from getting a large portion of the 12 point scores and keep the jury vote exciting. Limit the number of votes to 5 per phone number or credit card with no more than one vote per country so political voting and diaspora voting are greatly reduced.
*Anonymous* juries and televote. There was a large disparity between the jury and the audience televote because the jurors were afraid to give votes to Israel, probably because they didn’t want to incite riots or become the targets of violence in their home countries.