Eurovision 2021 HANGOVER thread and HOT STATS

I’d like it notes that, after the thirteen hour Russian telethon we endured before the premiere, everyone except me was slagging it off. It was only when an independent study found evidence of a vagina and no talent that Moopy decided to like her.
EXCUSE ME - I have been onside from the START!
 
Doing some (VERY) rough working out:

I have it in my head for some reason that 60,000 votes is usually the amount the 12 pointer gets in the UK in the grand final (off a viewership of typically around 8 million). Scale down a viewership of, say, 600,000 by around 133 - you're talking about 4,000-5,000 votes to get 12.

If you're sending something that could reasonably expect to finish in the middle/top 10 of the televote otherwise, you're probably looking more at 'topping up' the vote rather than faking the bulk of it to get it to an amount that would get the 12. Man the autodialer and the number spoofer and have a pile of 100 SIM cards to hand and voila - you've got yourself 12 in 3 or 4 countries (plus the two or three juries you had a word with) and you've got around 72 points and guaranteed yourself into the final.
Doing some (VERY) rough working out:

I have it in my head for some reason that 60,000 votes is usually the amount the 12 pointer gets in the UK in the grand final (off a viewership of typically around 8 million). Scale down a viewership of, say, 600,000 by around 133 - you're talking about 4,000-5,000 votes to get 12.

If you're sending something that could reasonably expect to finish in the middle/top 10 of the televote otherwise, you're probably looking more at 'topping up' the vote rather than faking the bulk of it to get it to an amount that would get the 12. Man the autodialer and the number spoofer and have a pile of 100 SIM cards to hand and voila - you've got yourself 12 in 3 or 4 countries (plus the two or three juries you had a word with) and you've got around 72 points and guaranteed yourself into the final.
Bonkers. What’s the smallest (population wise) country with an actual televote? Malta? With a bit of thought and organisation it seems anybody could pull this off.
 
I know Albania often don't have enough televotes to have a valid televote, so they're another one that would be a good target (albeit running the risk that it'll all go to waste if there aren't enough votes other than yours)

There's also the matter of being willing to pay at least several hundred (probably over a thousand? and probably over 2/3k if you want to make the voting window easier on yourself by getting more phones and a few people on hand to help out) pounds to do all this too, mind :basil:
 
I know Albania often don't have enough televotes to have a valid televote, so they're another one that would be a good target (albeit running the risk that it'll all go to waste if there aren't enough votes other than yours)
There's a minimum for a televote to be valid?
 
On reflection do we think Kirkorov is actually the genius behind these? It wouldn't surprise me if he has a factory of writers churning out hits which he then takes all credit for.
 
Presumably if it’s just YOU then it can’t be valid. Otherwise it would be ‘Moldova - 12 points, and also 10…’
 
There's a minimum for a televote to be valid?
Yes, overall. The EBU doesn't say what the number is (they tend to be very coy around how many televotes each country registers/each 12 pointer gets - most likely to avert complaints that something that won the 'popular vote' by getting 12s from the likes of Russia/Turkey/Germany didn't win overall), but Albania and formerly Bosnia and Monaco used to fail to clear the bar to have a valid televote quite regularly.
 
Remember when Scooch got that inexplicable 12 from Malta? :eyes:
 
Oh this was me pondering how many votes you need to have a valid televote. Presumably if almost nobody else is voting then it can’t be valid (but if you had multiple sims then it would look like multiple voters). Shut me up.
 
Remember when Scooch got that inexplicable 12 from Malta? :eyes:
To be fair - absolutely packed with British expats...

It's the 12 they gave for HERO the year after that would confuse me more (if of course she hadn't gone on to receive the 12 from every other country as well that year :disco:)
 
Oh this was me pondering how many votes you need to have a valid televote. Presumably if almost nobody else is voting then it can’t be valid (but if you had multiple sims then it would look like multiple voters). Shut me up.
OH - well yeah if it's just you pretending to be multiple voters voting 20x for Moldova and it doesn't clear the bar, it just goes to an invalid televote (and I think a similar San Marino-style simulated vote).

Thing is, this stuff must be relatively easy for the EBU/relevant broadcaster to detect? "huh, looks like a *lot* of people in this country voted 20 times for Moldova and nobody else in the semi"
 
Out of interest, here are the televote points the UK has received from Malta since they started publishing the split in 2014...

2014: 7pts
2015: 2pts
2016: 1pt
2017: 4pts
2018: 1pt
2019: 0pts
2021: 0pts
 
Not really, this seems to be the list - representing once, the rest are writing credits
  • “Kolybelnaya dlya vulkana” (Russia 1995, 17th, pictured)
    As artist only. Songwriters: Ilya Bershadskiy and Ilya Reznik
  • “Work Your Magic” (Belarus 2007, 6th)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos and Karen Kavaleryan
  • “Shady Lady” (Ukraine 2008, 2nd)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos and Karen Kavaleryan
  • “Shine” (Russia 2014, 7th)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos, John Ballard, Ralph Charlie, and Gerard James Borg
  • “You Are the Only One” (Russia 2016, 3rd)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos, John Ballard, and Ralph Charlie
  • “My Lucky Day” (Moldova 2018, 10th)
    With John Ballard
  • “Scream” (Russia 2019, 3rd)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos and Sharon Vaughn
  • “Prison” (Moldova 2020)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos and Sharon Vaughn
  • “Sugar” (Moldova 2021, 13th)
    With Dimitris Kontopoulos, Sharon Vaughn, and Mikhail Gutseriev
Doesn't seem like he's always had the juries onside either: https://wiwibloggs.com/2016/05/15/zero-points-21-juries-filip-kirkorov-call/142019/
I always thought Kirkorov was behind that Moldovan entry with the slutty policewoman that beat Kitty Brucknell and it bombed out in the semis. Did I dream that?
 
I always thought Kirkorov was behind that Moldovan entry with the slutty policewoman that beat Kitty Brucknell and it bombed out in the semis. Did I dream that?
Is that 2015? I don’t know why but I thought the same thing, maybe because it’s utter campy tack, but apparently not
 
The EBU are coy around the number of televotes needed/received in each country in order to prevent "power voting" as they call it. Doing a great job of it so far...

The "fake televoting" scores I believe are based on the averages of countries with similar televoting tastes, which obviously we don't know for San Marino, but in practice it seems to be the countries it is places in a pot with for the semi-final draws (that's how they worked out the fake Belarus jury vote last year).

So by that logic, San Marino's televote would be an average of the televotes from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Romania. Anyone bothered to work out whether that bore out?
 
The EBU are coy around the number of televotes needed/received in each country in order to prevent "power voting" as they call it. Doing a great job of it so far...

The "fake televoting" scores I believe are based on the averages of countries with similar televoting tastes, which obviously we don't know for San Marino, but in practice it seems to be the countries it is places in a pot with for the semi-final draws (that's how they worked out the fake Belarus jury vote last year).

So by that logic, San Marino's televote would be an average of the televotes from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Romania. Anyone bothered to work out whether that bore out?
Calculating the average placing of each country gives you;
12 Italy
10 France
08 Finland
07 Ukraine
06 Switzerland
05 Sweden
04 Lithuania
03 Iceland
02 Bulgaria
01 Russia

The actual San Marino ‘televote’ was;
12 Italy
10 France

08 Cyprus (13th)
07 Greece (12th)
06 Moldova (17th)
05 Ukraine (4th)
04 Finland (3rd)
03 Switzerland (5th)
02 Bulgaria
01 Russia


So other than the top two and 9th-10th it’s different. Moldova is the most notable, getting 5 points in the actual televote compared to 17th place calculating the averages. They were, unsurprisingly first and third with the Romanian and Portuguese televote, but were nowhere near in any of the others. They finished last on the Cypriot televote!

Sweden, Lithuania and Iceland were 11th, 12th and 13th in the actual televote.

I PRESUME they do just calculate the averages but seemingly use a different method. I know they changed the way the jury vote averages are calculated a few years ago, albeit it was all quite confusing. This newer method was supposedly put in place to stop one juror voting significantly different to the rest of the jury and affecting the overall score of an entry. Surely with that system Moldova wouldn’t have finished FOURTH considering they were bottom five with three countries..
 
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The EBU are coy around the number of televotes needed/received in each country in order to prevent "power voting" as they call it. Doing a great job of it so far...

The "fake televoting" scores I believe are based on the averages of countries with similar televoting tastes, which obviously we don't know for San Marino, but in practice it seems to be the countries it is places in a pot with for the semi-final draws (that's how they worked out the fake Belarus jury vote last year).

So by that logic, San Marino's televote would be an average of the televotes from Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, Portugal and Romania. Anyone bothered to work out whether that bore out?
Given Moldova got 12s from Greece and Portugal, that sounds about right. I imagine that pretty good forward hint at which countries are worth targeting each year to get the Sammarinese 12 may have something to do with that too :basil:
 
The Sammarinese televote is a nebulous thing that nobody has been able to back calculate - there's a very in-depth look here: https://escinsight.com/2019/05/28/s...-song-contest-2019-broken-hidden-calculation/

Basically it seems it must use more data than we get, e.g. the raw number of votes cast in each country that it uses or something, it doesn't work to do it with just the ranking/points.

Re: Sugar, it also came dead last in Albania and the Czech Republic's televote in the semi, then went on to get 7 from Albania and 12 from the Czech Republic in the final - could it be that the rigging was *so* blatant in those countries (e.g. 80% of the votes cast went to Moldova - easily feasible as those 2 countries get amongst the smallest televotes cast) that the EBU discounted those votes in the semi, then in the final it was more 'realistic'?
 
The Sammarinese televote is a nebulous thing that nobody has been able to back calculate - there's a very in-depth look here: https://escinsight.com/2019/05/28/s...-song-contest-2019-broken-hidden-calculation/

Basically it seems it must use more data than we get, e.g. the raw number of votes cast in each country that it uses or something, it doesn't work to do it with just the ranking/points.

Re: Sugar, it also came dead last in Albania and the Czech Republic's televote in the semi, then went on to get 7 from Albania and 12 from the Czech Republic in the final - could it be that the rigging was *so* blatant in those countries (e.g. 80% of the votes cast went to Moldova - easily feasible as those 2 countries get amongst the smallest televotes cast) that the EBU discounted those votes in the semi, then in the final it was more 'realistic'?
Moldova received 12 from the Czech televote in the semi and in the final
 
Ah yeah, I was looking at the Bulgarian bit there! True for Georgia as well to some extent, though - dead last in the semi then 2 points in the final (and again Georgia is amongst the countries with the smallest number of votes cast).
 
I don’t know why people make such a big deal about the disparities between semis and the finals, aren’t friendly nations separated by the pot system to try to break up bloc voting as much as possible? Bloc voting can’t really be stopped in the finals.

You might lose support as your former voters switch to someone else previously unavailable, you might gain it too when your friends from the other semi turn up. that’s before we get to the varying audiences between semis and the final.

there’s just a lot of variables that get oversimplified out of the way when people want to make their points
 
I don’t know why people make such a big deal about the disparities between semis and the finals, aren’t friendly nations separated by the pot system to try to break up bloc voting as much as possible? Bloc voting can’t really be stopped in the finals.

You might lose support as your former voters switch to someone else previously unavailable, you might gain it too when your friends from the other semi turn up. that’s before we get to the varying audiences between semis and the final.

there’s just a lot of variables that get oversimplified out of the way when people want to make their points
Yes, but going from FIRST to TWENTIETH is QUITE THE DISPARITY!
 
I agree sometimes there is natural fluctuation, but Georgia would be reasonably expected to rank a Moldovan entry higher than last in any case, which is why it looks odd - and given that it was a semi where there were entries like Poland, Georgia and the Czech Republic which universally scored dreadfully it seems odd that Moldova would end dead last anywhere (let alone in places that then suddenly have it way up 2 days later).
 
OK I don't need to calculate the "old way" results, ESCtoday did it already

France would have WON under the old combined jury & televote system :o by ONE POINT! Can you imagine the scenes :D

No changes for 3rd-11th place though and nothing major else, besides Sweden replacing Moldova on the left-hand side, and the UK technically switching places with Netherlands due to the crappy running order decider.
 
Ooh they only used the Sammarinese jury for that calculation too, who scored France 12 and Italy 10 :D Isn't THAT ripe for controversy?
 
Not sure if this new escandalo :D has been posted.


Drama Popcorn GIF by The Drew Barrymore Show
 
I wonder if there will ever be a day when the EBU goes ‘Stop everything!’ and investigates something. This doesn’t look like shenanigans in this case but literally every aberration or inconsistency is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders.
 
I have had a long boring day waiting for a carpet to be removed, so did a deep-dive into the results. The UK performance was truly shocking. Very few countries ranked Embers higher than 20th on either the jury or televote. The main outliers were 11th with the Polish jury and 14th with the Maltese televote…so James nearly got 1 point.
 
I’d be tempted to say closer because it was such a different time, but that performance remains an aural and visual catastrophe.
 
I know this is old news, but it bothers me that Croatia managed to finish top 10 in both of the required fields and...failed? I know why of course, I get it, but sometimes it feels like there should be exceptions. Like she was specifically within the top 10 most popular, which is what you want and need, with both juries and the public.

Has that happened often before? It seems SO WRONG. If you manage both you should get an INSTANT PASS or something.
 

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