It had been suspected for a while now, but yesterday saw the official announcement of the allocation draw. The EBU, along with the team of SVT, will host this draw on the 30th of January 2024. With that, we shall now take a further look into the details that we know so far, and what to expect of this yearly ceremony.
The draw 2024
On the 21st of December, the EBU could announce that the allocation draw for the semi-finals, will take place on the 30th of January 2024. The people in charge of guiding viewers through the draw will be Pernilla Månsson Colt and Farah Abadi. Both are very well experienced hosts and have been involved in both the Eurovision Song Contest and Melodifestivalen in the past.
Starting with Pernilla Månsson Colt, she was a presented during Melodifestivalen back in 1995 & 1998, and even the Swedish commentator for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1995, 1998 and when Sweden hosted it all in 2000. She also took care of the allocation draw back in 2013, when Malmö last hosted the contest, and was also a host during the opening ceremony of the contest, the same year. Being appointed this position once more, she had the following to say:
- “It will be great fun to kick off Sweden’s Eurovision year from Malmö, and The Draw can be more important than you might think for the competition later!”
Moving on to Farah Abadi, she was involved with the preview show for when Sweden hosted the contest back in 2016. Eventually, she would also become a co-host for Melodifestivalen in 2022, before being promoted to a main host in the 2023 edition. She also delivered the votes of the Swedish jury during the song contest, when Liverpool hosted it in 2023. Now having the honor of being part of the allocation draw, she said:
- “This is the kick-off for Eurovision and it’s extra fun to be able to do the program together with Pernilla, particularly as it’s in our hometown Malmö!”
What to expect?
The allocation draw is the symbol of the last host, officially handing over the hosting duties, to the upcoming host. A tradition, which started back in 2007, with the host city adding a special symbol, to a huge keychain. Malmö will become the first city, to be represented twice on this large keychain. The exchange will be done between certain people in power of the host cities in question. For 2023, that would be a exchange between Liverpool and Malmö.
The draw not only decides the semi-finals, but pretty much decides when delegations will arrive in the host city, as well as deciding which pre-qualified countries will vote in which semi-final. Usually a handful of pots are decided, prior to the draw, which lists the participating countries in bowls, who tend to have voting patterns, in order to separate friendly block voting.
This will be the first time Luxembourg participates under this current system, so where they will place is unknown. The country has never taken part in the contest during a televote system, so who might be allies with the Grand Duchy is completely unknown.
At the moment, 31 countries are set to participate in the semi-finals, but could become 32 should Romania end up participating in the end. One semi-final will end up having 16 countries, while the other will have 15 countries. Otherwise, if Romania participates, it will be 16 countries in both semi-finals. The final decision should be taken, before the allocation draw takes place.
It is expected that there will be a total of either 5 or 6 pots, which is yet to be confirmed. This will decide how many countries are placed in each bowl, the more pots that are announced, the less countries in each bowl and reversed. The BIG 5 (France, Italy, Germany, Spain & UK) + this year’s hosts (Sweden) are all pre-qualified countries, but it will also be decided in which semi-final these 6 countries will vote in. 3 of them will vote in the first semi-final, while the remaining 3 will vote in the second semi-final. The rest of the world voting is expected to be available in both semi-finals once again.
The draw will be aired live and can be followed on the official Eurovision Youtube channel, starting at 19:00 CET and local time. Below you can rewatch the 2023, in order to get ready and set for the 2024 draw.
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Source(s): Eurovision.TV
