Eurovision Song Contest 2025 - Mod warning in the OP

Getting back to the contest...

Despite being a very unpredictable year, I think the regulars on this thread made some good calls that went against the perceived wisdom of the odds and the fan bubble.

Many of us thought the risky songs of Finland, Malta and Australia were overhyped, and that Sweden were not nailed on for the win. I also think many of us appreciated Italy which was totally dismissed by the fandom (personally it was one of my favourites all season so I'm really happy with their result). The fan community really has some blind spots.

I am surprised that Estonia got top 3 as I thought the juries would absolutely hate it, so that's a bit of a head scratcher. It was very entertaining though.

Austria is a worthy winner and they have relatively recent experience hosting the event, so hopefully we get a good show in Vienna/Graz/Innsbruck. Very likely that Conchita will be one of the hosts.

Obviously there is a bit of a cloud over the contest right now and I hope the EBU have had a much needed wake up call.

I remember how toxic this place became last year, so I've stayed away since Friday morning. Ready to dip my toe back in (and I'm relieved to see it's still open for comments.)

First off, I didn't watch the grand final. Not for protest reasons, but for family reasons. I've known since November that I had a family event on the 17th of May so watching the grand final was never going to happen. I wasn't overly bothered, partly because of last year's mess, but partly because it makes for a nice parallel for me. My cousin got married the day of Eurovision 1989, the previous time Switzerland hosted, so 8-year-old me was at the reception and couldn't watch the contest. I'm a bit older now, but family commitments again kept me away from a Eurovision in Switzerland.

I will watch the show during the week, all I've seen so far was the results announcements on YouTube. There's lots to unpick even from that, and I think we need to talk about the "girlbop."

When it comes to fandom, the girlbop seems to be the genre that gets the most attention. The YAS QUEEN SLAY fans tend to make up a disproportionate of fans online, and it doesn't help that Wiwibloggs, the biggest fansite, doesn't seem to care about any song that isn't an pop song sung by a young woman. So this year it was all about Malta and Finland. I've already said plenty about Malta this Eurovision season, and I won't lie, after all their "We're not doing a play on words, we've never heard this "Serving c*nt" phrase of which you speak, we just want to celebrate our language and serve singing"-schtick, it was a little satisfying to see Miriana look crestfallen when she received just eight points from the televote.

There were plenty of Eurovision fans who still can't accept that "our Queen" Erika Vikman didn't win UMK in 2020, and I remember the horrible abuse Axel received for daring to beat the fan favourite. Erika finally had her moment with "Ich Komme", but voters clearly thought it was nothing amazing and she didn't even make the top 10. if anyone had predicted a finish outside the top 10 for Erika two weeks ago, they likely would have been hounded off social media.

Because fans make up a bigger proportion of voters during the semis, girlbops have a good record of making the final, but once Saturday comes, their votes are watered down by Mr O'Shea from Tullamore, Mrs Smith in Sevenoaks or Mrs Fischer in Düsseldorf, people who vote in the final but who see Eurovision as a one-night event.

Last year was similar - the big girlbops from Cyprus, Greece and Austria all finished outside the top 10 in the final.

TL;DR: as @Libertine07 said above, much of the fandom completely loses the run of itself when it hears a 'girlbop', but the voters don't seem that interested, and the fandom doesn't seem to realise that they're only a small percentage of total voters come May.

Some other quick thoughts:

• I would have thought Olly's disappointing result last year might have led to countries avoiding being so overtly sexual. It didn't, with Malta, Australia and Finland all going for smut. It worked for none of them. When it comes to Eurovision, sex doesn't sell.
• Please, please, please reduce the voting window. I know there many discussions about the voting to come, but this is unrelated to that. There is no need for the voting window to be all contest long plus 40 minutes after that. If you like, say, the fifth song on, but you don't vote for it after 90 minutes, you're not going to vote for it 30 minutes later. I'm old enough to remember when the lines were open for five minutes. Either make the voting window all contest long plus 15 minutes, or open the lines for 20 minutes after the final song. We don't need four intervals.

@supereurope

At least you got to enjoy the craic here for the Semi Finals.

'girlbop' is a new one for me… did Luxembourg also fall into that category?

or a vote for the country that you don't want to win. Let them try to manipulate that vote

There'd have to be a concerted social media campaign co-ordinating a "stop country X from winning" … where it's agreed to back one of the other favourites with your public votes. If people can be mobilised to vote for country X, it might generate that response next time.

I think this would very hard to organize and a great shame if the competition goes in this direction. I dont want pro and anti Israeli campaigns being run every year. I see RTVE, the Spanish public broadcaster has called for an urgent debate on the televote process at the Eurovision.

I would agree. I think the pro-israeli campaigns have just been so effective the last two years that they have made the public vote a bit of a farce. If nothing changes it will be the same thing next year. Reducing the votes from devices would be a good idea or changing the weight between jury and public votes. Making the winning about the song.

I'm old enough to remember the 2000s at Eurovision. It was the era of 100% televoting, when gimmicks, novelty, and bloc and diaspora voting dominated. While viewers in that era mostly got it right when choosing a winner, it was elsewhere on the scoreboard where the problems were. Terrible songs qualifying for the final over better ones or terrible songs finishing in the top 10 giving them automatic passage to the grand final the following year, so they didn't even have to try and make an effort with their songs.

After the televote winners were denied the overall win in 2023 and 2024, fans have been raising their voices on social media about how the juries are outdated, too conservative, have no idea of modern music and therefore should be abolished in the grand final as well. These fans are mainly younger fans who weren't around or have no memory of the 2000s, but feel there was an injustice that the "people's champion" didn't win two years in a row and have been outspoken that it's time to remove juries from the contest completely.

Those voices have been very quiet since Saturday night.

No bias in your voting judging by your signature at the bottom alright🤣

There isn't. I didn't vote for Israel last year. Didn't like the song, so I didn't vote for it. Liked the song and the Luxembourg song this year, so I voted for both. If no song tickles my fancy next year, I won't vote for any.

Yes, I would categorise Spain as a "girlbop", but certainly not France, Greece, Switzerland.

If you had said a week ago that Estonia would finish above Sweden, or that Switzerland would receive zero televotes, I would have called you ‘Verrückt’. 😎

Here is the reason why televoting is a screwed up and unfair way of deciding the winner.
Only 5% of the general viewing public watching Eurovision in a particular country are televoters. The other 95% don't give a crap.
However, these 5% are a highly motivated group of voters.
They can necessitate an extreme swing for whoever they are rooting for, or otherwise.
If you imagine a room of 100 people and 99 of them vote once, and one of them votes 20 times, based on the math's, you could expect the one who voted 20 times to actually win."
If a lot of Israelis or Armenians in say the UK or Ireland are highly motivated for their country to win Eurovision, they will vote multiple times thus skewing the televoting figures in the country they are phoning from.