19 Eurovision 2025 feedback

"Something is rotten in the state of Eurovision." Is it cheating, or just strong lobbying? This is the second year that strange things have happened during the televote, the audience vote. I've been a Eurofan since the early '80s, and the management team has been going downhill for years. I love Eurovision because it's a big musical show with different styles of music, from dance to metal, jazz, folk, and rock. After the sad years of classical pop in the '80s, there were also great songs that made history. Eurovision has become huge, with more money than ever, but it also has a non-neutral sponsor, Moroccan Oil, a Canadian-Israeli company. It's become very political, not only because of geopolitical voting. However, the EBU (Eurovision Organization) bans political speech or demonstrations, except for banning Russia since the war in Ukraine. However, for the same reasons, they are not banning Israel for its genocide in Palestine in response to the Hamas attack. Logical? Many countries have called for an Israeli ban, but the EBU has also banned contestants for displaying Palestinian flags.

Some countries stopped participating in Eurovision because they found it too LGBT-friendly (and not only for financial reasons). Poland and Turkey did that, but Poland was back in the contest this year because of the new government. Russia certainly wouldn't participate for the same reasons. I also remember the political vote of the jury in 2016 when Russia should have won with Sergei Lazarev, who is pro-LGBT and anti-war in Russia. Russia was in the lead in the televote, but many countries voted for Ukraine and gave Russia zero points, despite the quality of the song and the performance. Ukraine won with a song about Crimea in 1944. So, the EBU is completely hypocritical when it comes to politics. They banned some non-binary flags and used anti-booing tools during the show. But the disaster was so close this year.

Something strange happened last year. Israel's televote was far from all the polls and bookmakers' forecasts, outperforming in the major countries. Some say it was the result of intense lobbying of the Israeli diaspora by the country's foreign minister. This is not false, and it's not only for Eurovision. For Israel, Eurovision is also a political goal to present a friendlier image, even though the far-right government is against LGBT rights in the country. The jury vote was quite fair, with fewer geopolitical votes than before. Israel was only fifth overall (second in the televote). The contestant was booed by the audience, but nothing was heard on TV. Israel received first place from Albania, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and the rest of the world. The same thing happened this year. The Israeli contestant was also political because she is a survivor of October 7. This time, Israel won the televote from almost every country, except for Montenegro, Austria (the winner), Azerbaijan, Serbia, and Georgia. What if you consider that Israel is unpopular in Europe because of the genocide, and that the Israeli song was not better than the other songs?

The EBU has changed many things about the televote system. You can vote 20 times with your phone. However, since you can have multiple phones, you can vote up to 40 times or more. It costs about €1 per vote. You can also use a phone app and a credit card to vote. With the app, you can cheat on the phone's location and vote in several countries, even if you are in Israel. Since Israel has government-employed hackers, it's possible that the televote could be manipulated. However, we must also consider that not everyone watching Eurovision votes. For example, I didn't vote 20 times for my favorite song, nor did I try to vote for France, even though I knew how. Therefore, the vote against Israel is diluted across several countries, and it doesn't use the same lobbying tools that I saw on social media from pro-Israel and Israeli bots. Therefore, it's not necessary to spend a lot of money or use hacking tools to cheat in the televote. Is it cheating? In my opinion, it is, and I was also very upset.

Both Belgium and Spain made controversial statements during or before the performance of the Israeli song (and maybe Finland and Island too). They are calling for an audit of the televote, and some countries are still calling for an Israeli ban. With these voting rules, a scandal could happen again next year, but it could also happen to another country with a strong diaspora. In 2016, I was opposed to the jury vote because of the political context of the Ukraine-Russia war. But now, I support new rules for the televote because it can be manipulated for political reasons. The contest itself is not as good as it used to be. Many countries are more focused on LGBT caricatures than on normal songs, and there is too much Eurodance and folkloric samples. It's also a contest for white people, because black contestant have often very few votes from the ... audience. However, there were also good things, such as the use of mother languages more than English. Eurovision did not explode this time, but the EBU must react and make changes. After 1998 (due to military reasons), 2026 could be a year without the ESC for me. For the moment, EBU is only proposing to reduce vote limit...

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