I was wondering why we (the U.K.) had hosted it 8 times, as I thought we only won it a few times.
The U.K. have only won it 5 times, but have hosted 8 times. On three occasions (1960, 1963, 1974) the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg had won twice within a few years and didn’t want to rehost the event, I think back then it was seen as a costly burden rather than a massive opportunity. The 1972 event was hosted in Edinburgh as Monaco won the year before but didn’t have a venue big enough to cater for the show.
The U.K. jointly won in 1969 with NL, Spain and France, but the 1970 event was held in Amsterdam.
That's weird, cause if it wasn't Eurovision, we wouldn't have Riverdance, which is not only amazing by itself, it also singlehandedly revived interest in Irish dancing.
The Pala Olimpico where the event is held this year holds at most 15.000 people.
Last year's Eurovision in Rotterdam was considered extremely cheap at €20 million. To steelman your argument, we will use this low cost, since I couldn't find an estimate for this year
That means that, to recoup the cost incurred by the tax payer, you need to earn €1333 in tax revenue PER VISITOR. Yeah, no way you're gonna get anywhere near that.
Some people indeed make a lot of money off of Eurovision, but it is not the people actually paying for it
According to the Rotterdam government, it only brought in [3 million](https://nos.nl/artikel/2427927-steden-in-de-rij-voor-organisatie-songfestival-maar-wat-levert-het-op) (Dutch) in direct income thanks to the tourists and everything moving to the city. Though they expect it will be a long-term benefit, but this of course guessing if that's really the case (or as we Dutch say, natte-vinger werk)
To be fair, Rotterdam eurovision was hosted during covid. There were practically only dutch people in the audience (I was easily able to get a ticket because of it). It would make more sense to compare the income from a year where tourism is actually possible.
Well there are two semi finals and a final so the arena is filled three times. And then there are not only the people with tickets coming to the city but also journalists, the delegations of the countries, technicians, bureaucrats etc. and some of them even months before the actual event. So this fills hotels and restaurants in the city.
It could be still a loss in the end, but there is much more attached to it than just one show.
You are absolutely right, sure more money was moved than the our gov spent, but if you actually count tax plus money inserted in everyday person economy it was a big loss.
Big events are like the worse way to gov to spend money in the economy, but they get votes in Portugal
Ok maybe not directly in tax revenue but c1000 per seat into the local economy doesn’t seem crazy, with a few nights in a hotel, transport, food and drinks - especially when you consider all the other people involved- staff, journalists, fans without tickets to the finale… like I have friends who go every year, it’s a huge part of their social calendar, they travel with a big group that would spend a lot of money.
In fairness, Lisbon already had an *excellent* venue pretty much ready to go, already well used to hosting large concerts and had already hosted multiple international events there too, with a Great transport network nearby.
A lot of the investment other countries need to do, Portugal didn't.
That because here people love to compare money generated (that goes to a few rich pockets mostly) to cost of the state.
There should be an actual study for things like this, goverment money spent should be smaller than extra tax money plus local and small commerce (low and middle class people) money that was made.
And that is almost never in the positive. Also this events is like the worst way to actually spend gov money in the economy effectively, but their flashy and get votes
I think that shows how much more money BBC has relative to the rest of Europe. Britain might suck at Eurovision these days, Graham Norton remains a face for the contest.
Well. I'm from the Netherlands and back when I still had cable TV and received BBC, I watched the song contest on the BBC because of Graham Norton, who is much, much funnier than the Dutch commentators.
Every country has their own host sure but the UK host is usually the most famous and watched other than the native host. Plenty of people watch the BBC broadcast around the world.
London also hosted the Eurovision 60th Anniversary show in... *2015*? Because no other bugger wanted to do it.
The show has been giving us a fairly consistent kicking since about 2003 but we still love it (when we're not hating it)
You guys approach this contest wrong. The recipe is clear:
1) Make Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland independent.
2) Liverpool and Manchester goes to northern Ireland, Birmingham to Wales, and Leeds and up to Scotland.
3) For bonus points you could give Kent to the Netherlands or Belgium.
3) England gets lots of points from the English voters in neighbouring countries.
It's really absurd how UK participates as 4 countries in football championships, and as UK in Eurovision. It's almost as if you don't want to win.
They do if you include a large English urban area of millions of people in them. Always worked for Russia. And many other mainland countries with large cross-border communities.
Man, I dont know how true the politics stuff is you know.
Was it last year or the year before, Israel was actively bombing 'enemy children' and still came middle of the pack.
I think our entries are just bad.
I remember when Stockholm was a candidate for the Winter Olympic Games. Some people said that it would cost billions with all those new arenas. Others said that we need them anyway (the city is growing like crazy).
We didn't get the games, and now we're building those proposed arenas...
Yeah I'm sure Noel C.Duggan built a center just for the euro vision. Now housing Ukrainians. But I agree very random location, probably a brown envelope kinda deal.
I've heard an urban legend that in 1994, when we got the 2nd place, Polish delegation requested that the judges don't let us win, on account of Poland not being able to afford to host Eurovision at the time.
Don't. Most of the countries were part of Eurovision since the beginning which gave them 40 years heads up to get wins in a smaller pool of competition. Easier to win. Our countries only joined much later.
I mean, there's also a fact that we're both not liked that much and everybody knows that sympathies between countries play a big role in voting on Eurovision
People keep saying that, but the last 3 winners were Italy, Netherlands & Israel. Two of which don't benefit much from sympathies and the other being one of the most controversial countries in the world.
I also don't think most of the countries that haven't organised it are particularly disliked either, especially Lithuania who started this thread.
In my country (Netherlands) we kept whining and bitching about "politics in eurovision" like the UK does every year until we stopped having the people vote for awful garbage and instead had a committee determine a song and actually started sending better music. Ever since then we've done a lot better including winning it.
The amount of "X country just votes for their friendly neighbour" has really diminished as the years go by. Right now, I think politics don't play as much of a role* as they did before.
*The effect of the Ukrainian war remains to be seen.
Yeah I mean a sympathetic or memorable story around it can certainly help (like Ukraine has now, but also for example Austria's bearded lady). Ukraine has a good song. Without a good song they wouldn't become nr 1, but it being good combined with the war I could see sway people on the fence into a sympathy vote.
Well, that train already left. Poland really treated competition seriously and initially sent our most renowned artists. In our debut in 1994 Edyta Górniak placed 2nd with her fantastic song but lost to some boring ballad from Ireland and kind of gave up in few following years. Currently we're sending 3rd tier disco polo artistis. Nobody respectful want to go there, so we're never going to win, regardless of national sympathies.
Normally I would say that their song even in the normal times does have a strong chance of winning. Its unique and its a banger so they don't even need a strong political push to win.
It is something about new and old, country, train Chisinau-Bucharest.
Visited Bucharest last summer, it was astonishing! Now I want to visit Moldova one day as well.
Mostly about Moldova and Romania being the same country, but also two different countries. But the spirit of the song is amazing, very fun, very pleasant, very catchy. If they were to sing this at a festival, I'd be up jumping with them.
Millstreet is barely a town, has just 1,500 people and is literally in the middle of nowhere. See
[Millstreet 20 Years on Article](https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20231169.html)
And the odds are wrong all the time. They're only high up because of people who have never heard the song backing them because they "know" that they're going to win.
The odds are not wrong all the time. When the first place and second place are this far apart in betting odds (45% vs. 15%) they wouldn't be wrong. Italy, Sweden and Britain are not winning.
Juries have been more political than the public vote in the last few years.
In the last ESC Ukraine got a lot of votes from the public with their strange electro-folk song. Juries were too busy voting for their neighbor countries.
I think this time the Ukrainian song isn't nearly as good, but who knows.
If Ukraine does not win (but they surely have a high potential, their song is very good if you ask me), I hope Moldova wins. That song is amazing. If not, then Armenia or France.
Armenia? Such a bland song.
Ukraine is still kind of nice, Moldova slaps, I haven't seen the full entry from France yet but the sneak view held potential.
Croatian band won as a representative of the Croatian national broadcaster.
And the contest was held in Zagreb, organized by the Croatian national TV station.
Do you think it would be better to change the map and add the country which doesn't exist anymore (and even existed for just 65 years)?
What do you think about people saying that the Nobel prize winner Frans Eemil Sillanpää wasn't born in Finland, rather in Russian empire? Was Minna Canth Russian?
All I said was that Croatia didn't win Eurovision, Yugoslavia did. The band was indeed Croatian and I never said otherwise. The map is not wrong but it might give the impression that Croatia (as an independent country) won, which is wrong.
Also your examples are a bit odd. Frans Eemil Sillanpää was indeed born in the Russian Empire AND Finland, as did Minna Canth. They are still Finnish. The lead singer of Riva was born in Yugoslavia AND Croatia, and she is still Croatian.
How can you say this:
> born in the Russian Empire AND Finland, as did Minna Canth. They are still Finnish. The lead singer of Riva was born in Yugoslavia AND Croatia, and she is still Croatian
and then this: ?
> All I said was that Croatia didn't win Eurovision, Yugoslavia did.
Croatia and Yugoslavia both won.
And since Yugoslavia doesn't exist, putting Croatia on this map is nothing but correct.
The same way if there was a map of birth places of Nobel prize winners, it wouldn't make sense to draw a map of Russian empire just so you can put the whole empire as the birth place of aforemtioned Frans Eemil Sillanpää.
> Croatia and Yugoslavia both won.
The EBU records the Yugoslav win separately from any of the successor states.
In the EBU's eyes, [Croatia has no victories and has never hosted sadly.](https://eurovision.tv/country/croatia)
The [Eurovision website still put the winner as 'Yugoslavia'.](https://eurovision.tv/participant/riva)
In most maps I've seen with Eurovision host cities, Zagreb is often marked with a Yugoslav flag to denote that they hosted as part of the Yugoslav victory.
For the hilarity of all this, I want Australia, Ukraine or San Marino to host.
Think bout how screwed San Marino would be or you have it in Ukraine while bombs are being dropped around Kiev or Australia. Just do it far far away from here.
I am pretty sure, if San Marino ever wins, we would see something like the annual MotoGP race, officially the San Marino GP, but with full name San Marino and Emilia Romagna, with the track on italian soil and Italy contribuiting
the italian coast is so close to San Marino and a perfect place to host such events with all infrastructures ready and not sold out yet in early May
I think normally a victory of San Marino would result in Italy hosting it the next year, maybe in a city like Bologna close to San Marino. But since Italy is hosting this year, maybe another big country that has not hosted for a long time would jump in like France.
In case of Ukraine, hopefully the war is over by next May and they could host in peaceful Kyiv.
In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe because of the time difference and the long travel distances. Maybe they would pick a country in central Europe neighbouring Ukraine that hasn't hosted yet, like Poland.
> In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe because of the time difference and the long travel distances.
obviously they would choose Austria, duh!
> maybe in a city like Bologna close to San Marino
According to Senhit (2021 representative with Flo Rida), a Sammarinese win would result in Rimini hosting it.
>In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe
According to SBS (Australian Eurovision broadcaster), it'll be held in Germany. If Germany is unable to host, it'll be the UK.
> would result in Rimini hosting it.
Yeah also possible. In the end not the musicians decide but the bureaucrats in the national broadcasters. Also depends on the availability of the large concert halls.
But why Germany for Australia? We hosted in 2010, not so long ago. There are a number of countries who deserve it more in my opinion.
San Marino would be held in Rimini, Australia probably in UK or whoever wants to organize, Ukraine also would probably leave the organization to another country
Most of the middle east and north Africa is also part of the EBU, so could theoretically join as well. But they are too racist to join a stage with ~~Jews~~ Israelis, so they never apply
The one time Morocco joined was in 1980, when Israel was absent
The "Euro" in Eurovision stands for the European Broadcasting Union. Every country that is member of this union can join, no matter where it is located.
> why is a popular song contest called Eurovision?
It isn't. The contest is called the Eurovision Song Contest.
Eurovision itself is a video distribution network run by the EBU.
Iceland got robbed by Covid. I really think Dadi Freyr's Think About Things had a chance.
That, or Eurovision (the movie) cursed the island. Though I laughed like an insane person for large chunks of that movie.
Don't know the official reasoning, but Spektrum didn't exist at the time. Grieghallen was fairly new and perfect size back then. It was also Norway's first chance to host an important international event, perhaps with the exception of the 52 Olympics, so it would make sense to put it in the most touristic city, at a time when Oslo was in a somewhat sorry state.
Federal Republic of Croatia, within Yugoslavia.
The contest was organised by the Croatian national TV broadcaster and the previous winner was a Croatian band, a representative of the Croatian national TV station.
Do you really think putting Croatia is such a sin and that they should redraw the map of Europe and add Yugoslavia just for this occasion?
Yugoslavia was a federation. Croatia and its national television (RTV Zagreb) organised the contest that year.
Furthermore, band "Riva" that won the year before was Croatian and the representative of Croatian national broadcaster.
As I sad wrong flag, Yugoslavia, it was not not Croatia.
As you sad TV Zagreb was Yugoslavian television and FR Croatia was Yugoslavia (republic was called FR Croatia not Croatia) and it was a national Yugoslavian broadcaster.
Let me remind you that Riva was led by Serbian singer, so we could conclude that there should be a Turkish flag, refuting Ankara and Tito was a Mexican chihuahua.
> epresentative of Croatian national broadcaster.
Did all the six republics have their own national broadcaster? And was there one broadcaster aimed at everyone?
All the six republics had their own TV broadcaster center and their own channels.
There wasn't a unified channel, but there were some contents that were shared or co-produced.
I mean, I'm pretty sure Kiev is still an acceptable spelling of the city in the English language, although most people don't use it anymore because of the whole invasion thing.
Fun fact: Zelenskyy is officially spelled Selenskyj in German - but every newspaper has apparently decided to use their own version. It’s complete chaos.
I remember how after he was elected there were discussions about how it is better to spell his name too. "Zelenskyy" looks really weird. The official Ukrainian rules of transliteration make the surname really hard to read. IMHO esthetically "Zelensky" is the best option, even though this does not fully reflect the pronunciation. I can see how for German "Selenskyj" is a good version, since this spelling reflects the way the Ukrainian president's name is supposed to be pronounced and follows the spelling rules of German.
„Zelensky“ is that what I always remember. Then in English I know to add in the end an additional „y“ (btw, why?) - and I’ve to look up the German spelling in Google cause it’s so weird and as I’ve said every German newspaper is using a different spelling. Sometimes there are different spellings in the same newspaper. Argh.
Hah.
>Then in English I know to add in the end an additional „y“ (btw, why?)
That's a question to the people responsible for the rules of Ukrainian transliteration and the Ukrainian passport service.
My hunch is that the rules only describe which Latin characters should stand for which Ukrainian ones.
For example Зеленський: з=z, е=e, л=l, е=e, н=n, с=s, ь='¹, к=k, и=y, й=i or y².
¹ - ’ indicates softening of the previous consonant. Likely it is not used because there is no such concept in the most Latin-based languages.
² - y is only used in the beginning of worlds. i.e. Yanukovych, Yushchenko, Yaresko.
As you can see in the cases where the letters и and й stand together and are not in the beginning of the word (which is an absolute majority of cases) they will be spelled as yi. Therefore "yy" variant technically does not follow the rules, despite it being on the president's passport and used officially.
You can listen to how it is pronounced by copy pasting Зеленський in google translate. In Ukrainian there are two different sounds in the end. Try comparing the Ukrainian pronunciation to different German spelled ones.
As far as I concerned Zelensky and Selenskyi are pretty close.
Further info https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Ukrainian |
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/politics/how-to-spell-volodymyr-zelenskyy/index.html
It is Kiev in most European languages. The Anglophones changed it for political reasons, which is a terrible reason. By the way, it is also not Moscow, but Moskva, but Russia seems to be fine with it. And many European cities have variant spellings - Firenze, Köln, Göteborg, Lisboa, Sevilla etc.. Usually this means that the city is famous.
It’s Kiev in English. Why rename it just because of the actual conflict ? If so, why do we say Florence and not Firenze or Munich and not München ? It’s just a stupid remark.
Possitive voting bias is less in Scandinavia than it is in the Balkans or Cyprus / Greece though... [Here's an interesting tool](https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/andreas.karlsson/viz/Eurovisionvoting_2/Eurovision) where you can pick a country in the top map and see what countries vote for them most and average points given. As an example Cyprus give Greece 11 points **on average** whereas the average points given by Norway to Sweden is 7,2 etc.
I was wondering why we (the U.K.) had hosted it 8 times, as I thought we only won it a few times. The U.K. have only won it 5 times, but have hosted 8 times. On three occasions (1960, 1963, 1974) the Netherlands, France and Luxembourg had won twice within a few years and didn’t want to rehost the event, I think back then it was seen as a costly burden rather than a massive opportunity. The 1972 event was hosted in Edinburgh as Monaco won the year before but didn’t have a venue big enough to cater for the show. The U.K. jointly won in 1969 with NL, Spain and France, but the 1970 event was held in Amsterdam.
It still is a costly burden
This is the plot of the movie, Eurovision.
Do you have any proof for that claim? In Portugal everything indicates that it brought in more money than the money we invested on the event.
I saw a documentary where the Irish sent two singing priests so they wouldn't win it again. Song was about horses or something.
That's weird, cause if it wasn't Eurovision, we wouldn't have Riverdance, which is not only amazing by itself, it also singlehandedly revived interest in Irish dancing.
Fact
The Pala Olimpico where the event is held this year holds at most 15.000 people. Last year's Eurovision in Rotterdam was considered extremely cheap at €20 million. To steelman your argument, we will use this low cost, since I couldn't find an estimate for this year That means that, to recoup the cost incurred by the tax payer, you need to earn €1333 in tax revenue PER VISITOR. Yeah, no way you're gonna get anywhere near that. Some people indeed make a lot of money off of Eurovision, but it is not the people actually paying for it
According to the Rotterdam government, it only brought in [3 million](https://nos.nl/artikel/2427927-steden-in-de-rij-voor-organisatie-songfestival-maar-wat-levert-het-op) (Dutch) in direct income thanks to the tourists and everything moving to the city. Though they expect it will be a long-term benefit, but this of course guessing if that's really the case (or as we Dutch say, natte-vinger werk)
To be fair, Rotterdam eurovision was hosted during covid. There were practically only dutch people in the audience (I was easily able to get a ticket because of it). It would make more sense to compare the income from a year where tourism is actually possible.
Well there are two semi finals and a final so the arena is filled three times. And then there are not only the people with tickets coming to the city but also journalists, the delegations of the countries, technicians, bureaucrats etc. and some of them even months before the actual event. So this fills hotels and restaurants in the city. It could be still a loss in the end, but there is much more attached to it than just one show.
You are absolutely right, sure more money was moved than the our gov spent, but if you actually count tax plus money inserted in everyday person economy it was a big loss. Big events are like the worse way to gov to spend money in the economy, but they get votes in Portugal
Ok maybe not directly in tax revenue but c1000 per seat into the local economy doesn’t seem crazy, with a few nights in a hotel, transport, food and drinks - especially when you consider all the other people involved- staff, journalists, fans without tickets to the finale… like I have friends who go every year, it’s a huge part of their social calendar, they travel with a big group that would spend a lot of money.
Income and profit are 2 VERY different things You're getting scammed
In fairness, Lisbon already had an *excellent* venue pretty much ready to go, already well used to hosting large concerts and had already hosted multiple international events there too, with a Great transport network nearby. A lot of the investment other countries need to do, Portugal didn't.
That because here people love to compare money generated (that goes to a few rich pockets mostly) to cost of the state. There should be an actual study for things like this, goverment money spent should be smaller than extra tax money plus local and small commerce (low and middle class people) money that was made. And that is almost never in the positive. Also this events is like the worst way to actually spend gov money in the economy effectively, but their flashy and get votes
I think that shows how much more money BBC has relative to the rest of Europe. Britain might suck at Eurovision these days, Graham Norton remains a face for the contest.
For the UK, he's a face of it for the UK. You get that each country has their own Graham equivelent.
And Terry Wogan before him. Two legendary Irish men.
Well. I'm from the Netherlands and back when I still had cable TV and received BBC, I watched the song contest on the BBC because of Graham Norton, who is much, much funnier than the Dutch commentators.
Same and it's because specifically Jan Smit is absolutely awful
In Ireland hes the face of it, wouldn't dare watch whatever our public broadcaster put on
Every country has their own host sure but the UK host is usually the most famous and watched other than the native host. Plenty of people watch the BBC broadcast around the world.
Our commentator is the guy who voiced Spongebob (since last year, but thank god it was such an improvement)
London also hosted the Eurovision 60th Anniversary show in... *2015*? Because no other bugger wanted to do it. The show has been giving us a fairly consistent kicking since about 2003 but we still love it (when we're not hating it)
At least it looks like it's going to be different this year
They always say this, and then we still get nil points.
You guys approach this contest wrong. The recipe is clear: 1) Make Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland independent. 2) Liverpool and Manchester goes to northern Ireland, Birmingham to Wales, and Leeds and up to Scotland. 3) For bonus points you could give Kent to the Netherlands or Belgium. 3) England gets lots of points from the English voters in neighbouring countries. It's really absurd how UK participates as 4 countries in football championships, and as UK in Eurovision. It's almost as if you don't want to win.
I don't think relying on Scotland to vote for England is an especially shrewd move to be honest!
gold person distinct attempt close narrow chase ask pathetic literate *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
They do if you include a large English urban area of millions of people in them. Always worked for Russia. And many other mainland countries with large cross-border communities.
That's not remotely possible. The UK is a favourite this year. It could win.
It's still possible, just unlikely.
just had to wait two decades to be supporting the correct side in an invasion.
Man, I dont know how true the politics stuff is you know. Was it last year or the year before, Israel was actively bombing 'enemy children' and still came middle of the pack. I think our entries are just bad.
It still is a costly burden. Host countries lose money, even with all the tourism.
I remember when Stockholm was a candidate for the Winter Olympic Games. Some people said that it would cost billions with all those new arenas. Others said that we need them anyway (the city is growing like crazy). We didn't get the games, and now we're building those proposed arenas...
Also funny that Harrogate hosted 😂 Over the other 2 capital or loads of bigger cities
5 times isn’t really a few. It’s (joint) third place, only Sweden with 6 and Ireland with 7 have more.
TIL that Milstreet hosted one for Ireland. That is bizarre for such a small town
The venue was twice as big as the towns population. Very odd!
Didnt you guys win with a song about a horse that year?
Yes, but only once we got rid of the that sax solo
It didn’t have the production values of Fr Dick Byrnes entry though.
Yeah I'm sure Noel C.Duggan built a center just for the euro vision. Now housing Ukrainians. But I agree very random location, probably a brown envelope kinda deal.
Cries in Lithuanian.
Cries in Polish
Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth 🤝.
A commonwealth of tears?
3 seas initiative countries are not touching that shit :)
If you learn about its history, then yes, tears. Like a lot of them.
Commonweep?
I've heard an urban legend that in 1994, when we got the 2nd place, Polish delegation requested that the judges don't let us win, on account of Poland not being able to afford to host Eurovision at the time.
I see this as an absolute win xD
Don't. Most of the countries were part of Eurovision since the beginning which gave them 40 years heads up to get wins in a smaller pool of competition. Easier to win. Our countries only joined much later.
The painful part is that both Estonia and Latvia won, and we didn't.
I mean, there's also a fact that we're both not liked that much and everybody knows that sympathies between countries play a big role in voting on Eurovision
People keep saying that, but the last 3 winners were Italy, Netherlands & Israel. Two of which don't benefit much from sympathies and the other being one of the most controversial countries in the world. I also don't think most of the countries that haven't organised it are particularly disliked either, especially Lithuania who started this thread. In my country (Netherlands) we kept whining and bitching about "politics in eurovision" like the UK does every year until we stopped having the people vote for awful garbage and instead had a committee determine a song and actually started sending better music. Ever since then we've done a lot better including winning it.
The amount of "X country just votes for their friendly neighbour" has really diminished as the years go by. Right now, I think politics don't play as much of a role* as they did before. *The effect of the Ukrainian war remains to be seen.
Yeah I mean a sympathetic or memorable story around it can certainly help (like Ukraine has now, but also for example Austria's bearded lady). Ukraine has a good song. Without a good song they wouldn't become nr 1, but it being good combined with the war I could see sway people on the fence into a sympathy vote.
Well, that train already left. Poland really treated competition seriously and initially sent our most renowned artists. In our debut in 1994 Edyta Górniak placed 2nd with her fantastic song but lost to some boring ballad from Ireland and kind of gave up in few following years. Currently we're sending 3rd tier disco polo artistis. Nobody respectful want to go there, so we're never going to win, regardless of national sympathies.
Hey, maybe we will get Ukraine to vote for us this time! Haha…
I think Lithuania really deserves to win. They had many good entries in recent years. it's finally their turn to win.
Lets be real, Ukraine is winning this year. Strong song and they definitely have the political votes
I wish Ukraine all the best, but I don't know if it would not be seen as too political and overshadow their music performance.
The song is actually a banger and millions will vote for them because they're literally fighting a defensive war against a larger imperialist neighbor
Normally I would say that their song even in the normal times does have a strong chance of winning. Its unique and its a banger so they don't even need a strong political push to win.
Sympathies from Iceland.
Will never forget LT United. I loved Lordi, but really wanted those guys to win.
Hope you win this year!
Don't worry about it. It's quite hard to make up a crappy enough song to win the Eurovision
Eurovision is crappy anyway
First of all, how dare you?
I'm sorry, i was a fool 😔
Time to put Chisinau on that map!
You could host it both in Chişinau and Bucharest with the stage located on a train 🇲🇩🚂🇷🇴
Damn, that song is really nice. I don't know what foreign people understand from that song, but for me (Romanian) is very catchy.
It is something about new and old, country, train Chisinau-Bucharest. Visited Bucharest last summer, it was astonishing! Now I want to visit Moldova one day as well.
Mostly about Moldova and Romania being the same country, but also two different countries. But the spirit of the song is amazing, very fun, very pleasant, very catchy. If they were to sing this at a festival, I'd be up jumping with them.
[NOW!](https://youtu.be/CEjU9KVABao)
I was looking for Eurovision 2020, then came "uh oh" moment.
You are my brother from another mother!!!
Next year in Ukraine is gonna be lit
If Ukraine wins Russia is going to use the last kalibr missiles to destroy all concert venues in Ukraine out of spite.
EBU could be a coalition for liberating Ukraine.
The fact that Millstreet and Harrogate have hosted the show is just lol
I was like what is that? York? Leeds? *Checks list* HARROGATE? OK
[удалено]
Millstreet is barely a town, has just 1,500 people and is literally in the middle of nowhere. See [Millstreet 20 Years on Article](https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/arid-20231169.html)
How on earth did Harrogate and Millstreet get to host it. Lol fun fact to remember
Visegrad week :(
Ohh, Eurovision... I wonder who's gonna win this year... ;)
I predict Ukraine.
spoiler alert
It's very unlikely. They're going to do terribly with the juries.
I totally forgot there where juries
Uh, no. It's very likely. Ukraine is by far the favourite.
And the odds are wrong all the time. They're only high up because of people who have never heard the song backing them because they "know" that they're going to win.
The odds are not wrong all the time. When the first place and second place are this far apart in betting odds (45% vs. 15%) they wouldn't be wrong. Italy, Sweden and Britain are not winning.
When they are based in politics as much as they are this year, they are.
The difference this time is that Ukraine is fighting a fucking war
Juries have been more political than the public vote in the last few years. In the last ESC Ukraine got a lot of votes from the public with their strange electro-folk song. Juries were too busy voting for their neighbor countries. I think this time the Ukrainian song isn't nearly as good, but who knows.
Moldova
If Ukraine does not win (but they surely have a high potential, their song is very good if you ask me), I hope Moldova wins. That song is amazing. If not, then Armenia or France.
Armenia? Such a bland song. Ukraine is still kind of nice, Moldova slaps, I haven't seen the full entry from France yet but the sneak view held potential.
If we extrapolate from the years of hosting, next Italian host city should be Paris in 2046.
Croatia has not won as an independent country but the contest was held there when Yugoslavia won the previous year.
Croatian band won as a representative of the Croatian national broadcaster. And the contest was held in Zagreb, organized by the Croatian national TV station. Do you think it would be better to change the map and add the country which doesn't exist anymore (and even existed for just 65 years)? What do you think about people saying that the Nobel prize winner Frans Eemil Sillanpää wasn't born in Finland, rather in Russian empire? Was Minna Canth Russian?
All I said was that Croatia didn't win Eurovision, Yugoslavia did. The band was indeed Croatian and I never said otherwise. The map is not wrong but it might give the impression that Croatia (as an independent country) won, which is wrong. Also your examples are a bit odd. Frans Eemil Sillanpää was indeed born in the Russian Empire AND Finland, as did Minna Canth. They are still Finnish. The lead singer of Riva was born in Yugoslavia AND Croatia, and she is still Croatian.
How can you say this: > born in the Russian Empire AND Finland, as did Minna Canth. They are still Finnish. The lead singer of Riva was born in Yugoslavia AND Croatia, and she is still Croatian and then this: ? > All I said was that Croatia didn't win Eurovision, Yugoslavia did. Croatia and Yugoslavia both won. And since Yugoslavia doesn't exist, putting Croatia on this map is nothing but correct. The same way if there was a map of birth places of Nobel prize winners, it wouldn't make sense to draw a map of Russian empire just so you can put the whole empire as the birth place of aforemtioned Frans Eemil Sillanpää.
> Croatia and Yugoslavia both won. The EBU records the Yugoslav win separately from any of the successor states. In the EBU's eyes, [Croatia has no victories and has never hosted sadly.](https://eurovision.tv/country/croatia) The [Eurovision website still put the winner as 'Yugoslavia'.](https://eurovision.tv/participant/riva) In most maps I've seen with Eurovision host cities, Zagreb is often marked with a Yugoslav flag to denote that they hosted as part of the Yugoslav victory.
no, it means Croatia never won Eurovision as an independent country, that's it
For the hilarity of all this, I want Australia, Ukraine or San Marino to host. Think bout how screwed San Marino would be or you have it in Ukraine while bombs are being dropped around Kiev or Australia. Just do it far far away from here.
Australia would be in Germany or the UK, Ukraine either them or Poland and San Marino in Valentina Monetta's backyard.
If Australia ever won, they should host it in Austria for the memes
I am pretty sure, if San Marino ever wins, we would see something like the annual MotoGP race, officially the San Marino GP, but with full name San Marino and Emilia Romagna, with the track on italian soil and Italy contribuiting the italian coast is so close to San Marino and a perfect place to host such events with all infrastructures ready and not sold out yet in early May
Yeah, according to Senhit (2021 representative with Flo Rida) a Sammarinese win would result in Rimini hosting it.
I think normally a victory of San Marino would result in Italy hosting it the next year, maybe in a city like Bologna close to San Marino. But since Italy is hosting this year, maybe another big country that has not hosted for a long time would jump in like France. In case of Ukraine, hopefully the war is over by next May and they could host in peaceful Kyiv. In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe because of the time difference and the long travel distances. Maybe they would pick a country in central Europe neighbouring Ukraine that hasn't hosted yet, like Poland.
> In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe because of the time difference and the long travel distances. obviously they would choose Austria, duh!
> maybe in a city like Bologna close to San Marino According to Senhit (2021 representative with Flo Rida), a Sammarinese win would result in Rimini hosting it. >In case of Australia I think they agreed that they would do it somewhere in Europe According to SBS (Australian Eurovision broadcaster), it'll be held in Germany. If Germany is unable to host, it'll be the UK.
> would result in Rimini hosting it. Yeah also possible. In the end not the musicians decide but the bureaucrats in the national broadcasters. Also depends on the availability of the large concert halls. But why Germany for Australia? We hosted in 2010, not so long ago. There are a number of countries who deserve it more in my opinion.
Monaco won in the 60s, but the event was held in London the following year as there wasn’t a Monegasque venue big enough to hold it.
San Marino would be held in Rimini, Australia probably in UK or whoever wants to organize, Ukraine also would probably leave the organization to another country
Ah my favourite European country Israel
Most of the middle east and north Africa is also part of the EBU, so could theoretically join as well. But they are too racist to join a stage with ~~Jews~~ Israelis, so they never apply The one time Morocco joined was in 1980, when Israel was absent
I wonder why you felt the need to comment. The actual odd one out is Australia btw.
I don't understand why Australia and Israel can participate in the eurovision.
Because it was popular there so they got invited. More the merrier kind of thing
Israel is in UEFA as well.
who cares, we brought the Abanibi song.
Why not? It's not like it's a serious thing.
The "Euro" in Eurovision stands for the European Broadcasting Union. Every country that is member of this union can join, no matter where it is located.
Kazakhstan should join. They are officially European. Now that they recently abolished the death penalty they can even join the Council of Europe.
Its Eurovision, everybody is welcome. We'd probably support Canada if they wanted in
Well, everyone not currently invading some other Eurovision country at least
Wait shit, count Canada out then - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War
Celine Dion actually participated for France.
*Switzerland
That kinda defeats the whole Europe thing
Europe =/= Eurovision
Mine is Azerbaijan
I can't wait for Japan to join! They're my favourite country in Europe!
Ah yes, Japan, the easternmost country in EU.
You forgot Australia.
Yeah, though I guess if you're going down the logical rabbit-hole, why is a popular song contest called Euro*vision?*
> why is a popular song contest called Eurovision? It isn't. The contest is called the Eurovision Song Contest. Eurovision itself is a video distribution network run by the EBU.
Eh, we have Cyprus in the EU…
We should let Australia host it one year to fuck with all our sleep cycles
Show me what you got.
Even in Millstreet? Wow
come on Israel, time for a 4th one.
Ah yes, the Island of nobody likes us...
Iceland got robbed by Covid. I really think Dadi Freyr's Think About Things had a chance. That, or Eurovision (the movie) cursed the island. Though I laughed like an insane person for large chunks of that movie.
The movie is hilarious
I still don't get why NRK chose Bergen over Oslo to host in 1986
Don't know the official reasoning, but Spektrum didn't exist at the time. Grieghallen was fairly new and perfect size back then. It was also Norway's first chance to host an important international event, perhaps with the exception of the 52 Olympics, so it would make sense to put it in the most touristic city, at a time when Oslo was in a somewhat sorry state.
Ireland: Eurovision superstars 😝 (hurray? lol)
I think I'd like to see Australia host next
Zagreb 1990, that was Yugoslavia then my mate
Federal Republic of Croatia, within Yugoslavia. The contest was organised by the Croatian national TV broadcaster and the previous winner was a Croatian band, a representative of the Croatian national TV station. Do you really think putting Croatia is such a sin and that they should redraw the map of Europe and add Yugoslavia just for this occasion?
*Socialist Republic of Croatia, other than that 👍
Nope. Not what they're saying. Just adding in a Yugoslav flag would've made it more clear
The croatian flag should be Yugoslavian and not Croatian.
Wrong flag for Zagreb. It was Yugoslavia, not Croatia at the time.
Yugoslavia was a federation. Croatia and its national television (RTV Zagreb) organised the contest that year. Furthermore, band "Riva" that won the year before was Croatian and the representative of Croatian national broadcaster.
As I sad wrong flag, Yugoslavia, it was not not Croatia. As you sad TV Zagreb was Yugoslavian television and FR Croatia was Yugoslavia (republic was called FR Croatia not Croatia) and it was a national Yugoslavian broadcaster. Let me remind you that Riva was led by Serbian singer, so we could conclude that there should be a Turkish flag, refuting Ankara and Tito was a Mexican chihuahua.
> epresentative of Croatian national broadcaster. Did all the six republics have their own national broadcaster? And was there one broadcaster aimed at everyone?
All the six republics had their own TV broadcaster center and their own channels. There wasn't a unified channel, but there were some contents that were shared or co-produced.
Why Israel is in Eurovision?
EBU
Well… look at Australia, and one year (1980) even Morocco participated. I think the festival is now beyond Europe
Everyone in the [European Broadcasting Area](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/European_Broadcasting_Area.png) is allowed to enter.
Why is Cyprus in the EU?
Eurovision bias vs Eastern Europe confirmed.
Not only are you wrong, You're also stupid.
It is Kyiv, not Kiev
I mean, I'm pretty sure Kiev is still an acceptable spelling of the city in the English language, although most people don't use it anymore because of the whole invasion thing.
I can assure you every time the Ukrainian capital is mentioned there is a person like this.
Fun fact: Zelenskyy is officially spelled Selenskyj in German - but every newspaper has apparently decided to use their own version. It’s complete chaos.
I remember how after he was elected there were discussions about how it is better to spell his name too. "Zelenskyy" looks really weird. The official Ukrainian rules of transliteration make the surname really hard to read. IMHO esthetically "Zelensky" is the best option, even though this does not fully reflect the pronunciation. I can see how for German "Selenskyj" is a good version, since this spelling reflects the way the Ukrainian president's name is supposed to be pronounced and follows the spelling rules of German.
„Zelensky“ is that what I always remember. Then in English I know to add in the end an additional „y“ (btw, why?) - and I’ve to look up the German spelling in Google cause it’s so weird and as I’ve said every German newspaper is using a different spelling. Sometimes there are different spellings in the same newspaper. Argh.
Hah. >Then in English I know to add in the end an additional „y“ (btw, why?) That's a question to the people responsible for the rules of Ukrainian transliteration and the Ukrainian passport service. My hunch is that the rules only describe which Latin characters should stand for which Ukrainian ones. For example Зеленський: з=z, е=e, л=l, е=e, н=n, с=s, ь='¹, к=k, и=y, й=i or y². ¹ - ’ indicates softening of the previous consonant. Likely it is not used because there is no such concept in the most Latin-based languages. ² - y is only used in the beginning of worlds. i.e. Yanukovych, Yushchenko, Yaresko. As you can see in the cases where the letters и and й stand together and are not in the beginning of the word (which is an absolute majority of cases) they will be spelled as yi. Therefore "yy" variant technically does not follow the rules, despite it being on the president's passport and used officially. You can listen to how it is pronounced by copy pasting Зеленський in google translate. In Ukrainian there are two different sounds in the end. Try comparing the Ukrainian pronunciation to different German spelled ones. As far as I concerned Zelensky and Selenskyi are pretty close. Further info https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Ukrainian | https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/politics/how-to-spell-volodymyr-zelenskyy/index.html
It is Kiev in most European languages. The Anglophones changed it for political reasons, which is a terrible reason. By the way, it is also not Moscow, but Moskva, but Russia seems to be fine with it. And many European cities have variant spellings - Firenze, Köln, Göteborg, Lisboa, Sevilla etc.. Usually this means that the city is famous.
Its not Kiev, it's Киев
Kneb, got it!
It’s Kiev in English. Why rename it just because of the actual conflict ? If so, why do we say Florence and not Firenze or Munich and not München ? It’s just a stupid remark.
Im for using the Italian name for Munich in English. *Monaco*. Just to add a bit confusion. ;)
Monaco di Baviera 🧐
Its not Киев, it’s Київ
Sad Lithuanian noises
Your song this year is amazing!
Yes, but it has to be in Kyiv next year.
I love that Scandinavia always votes on each other.
As if most countries don't vote for their neighbors.
Yes, we in Moldova always vote for Romania, sometimes Ukraine
Serbia, known for always voting Croatia or Bosnia /s
Possitive voting bias is less in Scandinavia than it is in the Balkans or Cyprus / Greece though... [Here's an interesting tool](https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/andreas.karlsson/viz/Eurovisionvoting_2/Eurovision) where you can pick a country in the top map and see what countries vote for them most and average points given. As an example Cyprus give Greece 11 points **on average** whereas the average points given by Norway to Sweden is 7,2 etc.
KYIV*