National broadcasters for Spain and Belgium have now complained to the competition’s organisers, the European Broadcasting Union, after Israel won the public vote by a large margin.
RTVE, Spain’s public broadcaster, and VRT, the Flemish broadcasting company, are demanding that organisers investigate the televoting system, which allows voters at home to vote up to 20 times for a small cost charged to each vote by text or phone call.
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The EBU confirmed that RTVE and VRT had been in contact and said it took the complaints “seriously”.
Martin Green, the director of Eurovision, said: “It is important to emphasise that the voting operation for the Eurovision Song Contest is the most advanced in the world and each country’s result is checked and verified by a huge team of people to exclude any suspicious or irregular voting patterns.”
Politics aside, can someone explain to an American why Israel is in it? Kinda seems weird to have a non-European country in Eurovision.
Australia is an even a weirder choice.
Same applies to football (soccer), the Israeli teams cannot play against their neighbors for obvious reasons unless it’s a World Cup match. Those clowns should make peace.
Forgive my American ignorance, but do people actually watch Eurovision as entertainment? I feel like I’ve only ever heard of it as an arena for politics/protest/controversy, never “hey listen to this great song that won”. Is the controversy part of the draw?
Remember how big American Idol was? How many careers it launched? How many spin offs it spawned?
Americans would eat that shit up if we were involved.
Oh I’m sure, but it seemed like a different beast. American Idol was really tuned into the characters and personal drama, there was never that much meta-drama. Almost like the Super Bowl vs. World Cup
For the most part it can be great entertainment and i used to enjoy it for many years. Thinks started to become slightly weird for me, when i learned about the regime in Azerbaijan and not remembering anything to that extent being said in the mainstream media in Germany (or at least that i noticed) when it was there in 2012. Then things got more weird as Russia had annexed Crimea but was still allowed to participate, with there being some mention of it at least.
So i remember many years where politics did not play as much of a role and the “drama” was about the acts themselves or the national preselections. The preselections are always a drama in Germany as the German broadcasters work hard to get the most bland, boring and forgettable acts on instead of having any chance at winning.
It is a lot of fun, if it isn’t tainted by criminal regimes using the stage to get legitimacy. In that sense ignorance can be a bliss and i don’t know if i was just blissful because of that in the earlier years or if there was “a good old time”.
I didn’t know who Maneskin was until they won Eurovision, so I’d say so
I was wondering about the result because the politically situation always influences voting behavior for the ESC. Israel is currently not very popular (and for good reason) so I would have expected that they come in last yet they obliterated everyone else in the audience vote (just like they illegally obliterated Gaza). This did not add up and manipulation was the only reasonable explaination
I would not go as far that manipulation is the only reasonable explanation. Certainly Israeli lobby groups will have mobilized their people to vote extensively as participation in international events and the image of strong support are crucial for claiming legitimacy. As the article discusses the system of allowing up to 20 votes per number is favoring the ferverous.
There is three considerations from my side that i think need to be cleared:
- There is allegations that Israel used targeted ads on social media to encourage people to vote. Imo. this should be banned and lead to disqualification if true, especially as the EBU keeps emphasizing that ESC would be unpolitical. Having a state or state aligned actor push adds for voting is an obvious contradiction. (leaving all the other obvious ones aside for the moment)
- It must be laid open, how many “original” votes where cast for each candidate in each country and how many were multiple votes. This mechanism should be tossed out anyways. Someone willing to spend more money does not make his or her vote worth more than anyone elses. There remains the issue of multiple phone numbers per person, but that only gets amplified by allowing 20 votes on each of these phone numbers.
- It mus be analyzed if there was direct manipulations and fake votes. If that turns out to be true, that should also be a disqualification and multi year ban for the participating broadcaster. This should be separate from questions of exclusion that should be mandated by the actions of the countries.
To add to your No 1:
I’ve heard from other people (who don’t use a good AdBlocker) that they got shown ads for the Israeli song surrounding videos about Eurovision on YouTube. Someone also mentioned that in the ads he saw the song itself got advertised, it did not explicitly mention that it is a song from Israel. I use UBlockOrigin and therefore did not see these ads myself.
I don’t care who does it - I think that blatant advertising should not be allowed. Other countries are already disadvantaged by the comparatively huge costs to partake in the song contest.
People who oppose Israel’s participation didn’t watch and didn’t vote. That alone will have had an influence on the result. Even if they did vote, their votes were spread across dozens of other candidates.
Edit: I should’ve been more precise and said “many people”. Wishful thinking on my part, I suppose.
I would think the very people who watch and participate are exactly the ones who would oppose Israel. It’s a very woke broadcast.
I did not watch (and haven’t since 2023) and many others didn’t either. I am a bit disappointed in us that we did not even reach you with our calls to participate in the boycott, that’s our bad.
Some people somehow make everything about Israel, it is tiring
What do you mean by everything? This is pretty specific. About a specific thing.
If Israel were not present or a potential issue they wouldn’t be mentioned here.
Israel is currently starving 2 million people to death and openly advocating for genocide and ethnic cleansing. It is unacceptable to give them a stage and legitimize them that way. If it was Russia still allowed to participate in Eurovision we would have the same outcry.
And in so many cases it is really senseless stupid. It’s fucking Eurovision. It’s a silly, but entertaining show, but some people really take it too serious.
Lmao, it has always been about politics, not the songs. Which is why Ukraine won when the war escalated. Which is why Israel almost winning looks suspicious as fuck. The public doesn’t like them right now, no matter how hard they try to spin it PR wise.
What?
Eurovision has always been political
Only for stupid people who complained about “voting blocks” and “eastern european votes” and stuff like that. Some people take the ESC way to serious.