Broadcasters to be banned for up to 3 years if voting irregularities occur

[Sean]

Eurovision Song Contest organisers tighten measures to ensure voting integrity | News | Eurovision Song Contest - Copenhagen 2014

[In 2013] "No evidence was found to link any participating broadcaster to any improper activity or to suggest that any broadcaster was aware of the origin of the activity."

"If voting irregularities are detected before, during or after the contest in favour of any represented country, the Reference Group will automatically initiate procedures which carry a penalty of exclusion of the respective participating broadcaster from the contest for a maximum of three consecutive years.

"Just as football clubs are in principle accountable for the behaviour of their fans, we will hold – on a case-by-case basis – participating broadcasters accountable and make them responsible to prevent voting irregularities in favour of their entry," said Dr Frank Dieter Freiling, chairman of the Reference Group."

 

[ParadiseES]

wow that's a hard measure. I mostly agree with this, but what would happen if some country/group/whatever try to cheat in favour of a certain country just because they want that country to get that punishment? It's complicated... :?

 

[A-lister]

Just now they introduced bannings? Will be interesting to see if there's really any truth to this... *azerbaijan*ehm*azerbaijan*

 

[Matt]

Basically what I thinkthat means is that the EBU believes that several broadcasters/countries tried to cheat, there is no way to associate those groups with the actual broadcaster. Meaning they can't really prove it without a reasonable doubt. However with that new rule implemented, the EBU has a lot more leverage to penalize the broadcasters holding them accountable.
Considering the EBU received a good amount of criticism this past year, they should be given proper credit for being quite forceful on this subject so thumbs up from me

 

[tuorem]

I don't buy this will to fight against cheating.

Noone will be banned for sure, a measure of this kind was necessary to restore the contest's image a little bit after this year.

 

[anto475]

This seems a bit watery, there's definitive proof of cheating and the EBU are treating it like some governments treat the threat of climate change "we still need more evidence, nothing is certain". Don't get me wrong, it's a good measure that they're bringing in, but whether or not they'll implement it after May when the next set of cheating allegations come out is another matter.

 

[A-lister]

It's funny that EBU even admits that there's been cheating going on... I mean then we all know that there's reasons to why they overlooked it in the past...

*money rule the world*

 

[ParadiseES]

This even made the newspapers here. Even the regional ones

Now I think this is negative. This EBU's measure is just throwing a bad image of Eurovision. Now all the news talking about 2013 cheating. I think EBU should either punish the cheating countries or shut up. This is just pointless as we can see.

 

[MyHeartIsYours]

Fantastic measure.

 

[EDC0708]

Hopefully this means there will be no more cheating in future contests.

 

[Leydan]

Hopefully this means there will be no more cheating in future contests.

Really it will discourage any foul play that takes place.

 

[A-lister]

This even made the newspapers here. Even the regional ones

Now I think this is negative. This EBU's measure is just throwing a bad image of Eurovision. Now all the news talking about 2013 cheating. I think EBU should either punish the cheating countries or shut up. This is just pointless as we can see.

Well, it's a good thing if they were serious about all this, but it does give a bad taste in mouth that they admit they knew about foul play and cheating all along and first now say something on it.

They are sorta exposing their own corruption with this statement, because remember how they made up excuses for not releasing all the national split votes of 2013, it's pretty obvious now they didn't do it because they wanted to cover up things... most probably because they themselves have been part of making cheating possible... most possibly through bribery.

 

[dezbee2008]

Very interesting to read about.

How it's gonna be enforced will be a different story, surely this HAS to be something that the EBU should look into. Cheating is cheating, whether it's in music, sports, video game tournaments, etc.

 

[ayzelto]

It's a good decision, but if they didn't find anything before, just suspects... Anwway I would bet that more than one country is cheating, and I don't wanna mention anyone

 

[StellaStai]

I really don't know whats going on.. :?
But Metro has this article:

Eurovision Song Contest 2014: Rules changed after alleged cheating | Metro News

 

[ParadiseES]

Some Spanish media are already pointing what we all kinda knew. It's Azerbaijan who was caught cheating. For example, paying Lithuanian students.
Azerbaiján pagó a estudiantes lituanos para intentar ganar Eurovisión - Televisión - Estrella Digital - Primer diario digital en español

 

[EscGeek]

that means we wont see Azerbaijan until 2018 3

 

[Salmon]

Wow, that's a rare occasion: The EBU is actually reacting to all the criticism concerning Eurovision. I also do appreciate that they've chosen quite a hard penalty for broadcasters caught cheating - let's just see how all this turns out and if it makes the number of participants shrink even further

Though Matt definitely has a valid point. This will could eventually lead to people who have nothing to do with the broadcasters manipulating votes and these then being suspended without further investigation concerning the case :?

Hopefully this means there will be no more cheating in future contests.

You wish.

 

[Matt]

Though Matt definitely has a valid point. This will could eventually lead to people who have nothing to do with the broadcasters manipulating votes and these then being suspended without further investigation concerning the case :?

This will always be on a case by case basis, if the EBU determines that it's done by a group from a different country they would just blindly ban countries. Plus we have all the hypothetical scenarios and there is no way we could just assume. I'll say let's cross that bridge when we'll get to it.

 

[BGN]

The problem with the televoting was solved in very simple way here in Bulgaria by BNT. In the past we had such scandals and since 2011 it's allowed only 1 SMS for a song from one number (SIM card) and the scandals suddenly just stopped. It's a question of mathematics and logical thinking that the unbiased voters don't vote 20 times when in the same time people from diaspora or from the azeri power voting groups do it. That means people from the second group have 20 times more weight than the ordinary unbiased televoters and this distorts the results in a negative way. If there is this only 1 SMS per number rule, the power voting percantage will be down 20 times and it will be 20 times more expensive to cast the same amount of votes, because you have to pay SIM cards in full, but you can use them only once. 20 times less power votes + 20 times more expensive power voting = 20 times better result in terms of credibility. It's simple and effective.

In the azeri case there is no breaking in the rules. It's allowed to vote 20 times per phone and they just organise people to do it. You cannot want transparent results and in the same time to allow people to vote so many times from one phone. It's not Azeri's fault that this is possible. The next question is how they will find out if country cheats. For example the Azerbaijani TV could organise a voting in favour of Armenia with the aim get ARMTV banned. This is not the right way to solve the problem, moreover the new rule changes rather create new problems and questions, than solving them. In our case the 1 SMS rule works so well that last year won the song, that wasn't favourised by Elitsa and Stoyan ( ) and in the other NF's with such rule Poli Genova (2011) and Sofi (2012) won it without any discussions about the credibility of the result. This was not the case before when there wasn't such rule here.