The Eurovision final delivered the goods last night: strong performances, an unusually balanced jury vote that left the competition wide open heading into the televote, and a somewhat surprising but certainly deserving winner. When all the numbers are tallied, I think the fears of disastrous viewership numbers due to this year's "controversies" will be mostly unfounded. Historically, Eurovision viewership peaked in 2016, when 42 countries took part. From 2023 to 2025, 37 countries competed and audience figures remained remarkably steady. This year, five countries that participated in 2025 chose to boycott, but several others returned, resulting in a net decline of just two countries, from 37 to 35.
Early reports indicate that viewership is down, but countries representing 80 million people sat out, so some drop is expected. Among participating countries, Germany's numbers dipped slightly but remained strong. Numbers in France and the UK took a significant hit, but both performed poorly in the final: the UK got zero points from the televote, and France were near the bottom. I actually felt a
bit bad for both. I have followed LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER's YT channel for years and he's an incredible talent, but is completely the wrong guy for this kind of competition. He tried hard but the UK organizers knew they were throwing him to the wolves, and the UK public hated the song, so why should anyone else get invested in it? I liked the French song but the public obviously didn't, and Eurovision is all about forging an instant connection with a finicky public. To sum up, viewership appears to have declined most sharply in countries who competed with sub-standard songs. People are less likely to watch if they don't like the song and they perceive that their broadcaster is simply phoning it in with a poor song and/or performer. Among the countries that fielded competitive entries, I'm sure the viewership numbers will turn out just fine.
As for the boycotting countries, in last year's Eurovision, Ireland and Slovenia failed to qualify for the final, while Spain and Iceland finished 24th and 25th. Iceland were crushed by the jury vote and earned zero points, possibly due to the plagiarism scandal regarding their blatant rip-off of an Israeli song. The Netherlands had a respectable 12th place finish. What can we learn from these results? It's much easier to stage a "boycott" when your songs and artists have badly underperformed, necessitating a one-year reset. Pointing fingers at others and engaging in a largely performative "boycott" as a cover for those failures is a convenient face-saving excuse, nothing more.
As for Israel supposedly manipulating the televoting, they finished third, so I guess they didn't manipulate hard enough. More surprising was their 8th place finish in the jury votes (what, were those voted manipulated too??) I have yet to see any evidence that Israel engages in campaigning that is any different than what many other countries are doing virtually every year. And all of it pales in comparison to the palm greasing that goes on every year in the lead up to awards shows like the Oscars.
Instead of asinine conspiracy theories, let's just focus on the more obvious and sensible explanation: a lot of people really liked "Michelle". Heck, even the protesters in the audience were dancing during the semi-final! And the mathematics of what it takes to win hasn't changed since my post from last year. We should be able to agree on one thing however: no amount of campaigning could possibly undermine the integrity of the competition than opening the voting for the final before the first song is performed.
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