EBU Statement: Irregular voting patterns during Second Semi-Final 2022

[Brandt]

I think the content deserves its own thread.

You can read the statement here:

EBU Statement: Irregular voting patterns during Second Semi-Final 2022

EBU Statement: Irregular voting patterns during Second Semi-Final 2022

eurovision.tv

Basically EBU claims that Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, San Marino exchanged points with each other.

 

[FilipFromSweden]

I doubt the EBU said something like that, but it's strange Sweden got so many extra points due the replaced votes. Not everything is based on Sweden-hate.

Literally everything is based on Sweden-hate. Why is it strange? Do you just not understand EBU’s algorithm or what? It’s not like Sweden was ranked 15th by the juries and their points came out of nowhere. Besides, the UK won the jury vote so there’s that

 

[mup]

Literally everything is based on Sweden-hate. Why is it strange? Do you just not understand EBU’s algorithm or what? It’s not like Sweden was ranked 15th by the juries and their points came out of nowhere. Besides, the UK won the jury vote so there’s that

gets too much hate. Expect even more in the forthcoming years - I fear - now that the EBU's Executive Supervisor is a Swede.

 

[Grinch]

Here's a suggestion:

Let's cancel all the jury votes and televotes
Announce as the winner of next 10 eurovisions with 62829 points
Save time & money

 

[ESC_12 points]

If the EBU has investigated the case with valid evidence and proof, then I am agree to disqualify all the six countries from the ESC. I do not support cheaters. They should take a rest at least one year.

Still not explaining how "irregular voting pattern" in SF2 justifies changing countries' totally regular votes in the Final.
Why the EBU did not have "bad connection" on the SF2 but in the Final?
Why the EBU not just cancelled their Final voting by saying that there was "bad connection", thus their votes will be not counted, but instead they decided to give Georgian and Azerbaijani 12 points to the UK, and Romanian and Polish to Ukraine.
Why the EBU not let Georgia, Azerbaijan and Romania to go live but allowed it to Poland and San Marino?
Why the EBU did not had "bad connection" also with Greece Cyprus point exchange?
All the actions of the EBU will make sence when we see who willl host the ESC next year....

Anyway, I asked a lot of questions.... I better go and watch Gentlemen Jack season 2 now.

 

[Gitte]

If the EBU has investigated the case with valid evidence and proof, then I am agree to disqualify all the six countries from the ESC. I do not support cheaters. They should take a rest at least one year.

Still not explaining how "irregular voting pattern" in SF2 justifies changing countries' totally regular votes in the Final.
Why the EBU did not have "bad connection" on the SF2 but in the Final?
Why the EBU not just cancelled their Final voting by saying that there was "bad connection", thus their votes will be not counted, but instead they decided to give Georgian and Azerbaijani 12 points to the UK, and Romanian and Polish to Ukraine.
Why the EBU not let Georgia, Azerbaijan and Romania to go live but allowed it to Poland and San Marino?
Why the EBU did not had "bad connection" also with Greece Cyprus point exchange?
All the actions of the EBU will make sence when we see who willl host the ESC next year....

Anyway, I asked a lot of questions.... I better go and watch Gentlemen Jack season 2 now.

1) In the semi final there isn't a spokesperson who announces the point. The presenters do so, so no need for a bad connection, and the cheated votes didn't change the qualifiers anyway
2) this is decided by the algorithm
3) I read that they asked the spokespersons/broadcasters to announce the algorithm points, those who didn't agree had a 'bad connection' (less awkward than the spokesperson saying their unchanged 12 points, with martin interrupting them and going 'no no they cheated, 12 points go to x')
4) greece-cyprus is basic block voting that happens every year, no weird irregularity with 6 mostly unrelated countries suddenly scoring each other's mostly unpopular songs high

 

[Zerocalcare]

Proud that our strength always lies in televoting

 

[GermanBango]

The cheating here is obvious and should be punished one way or another. I can’t with these broadcasters playing the victim and even worse lot of people seem to buy it?!

 

[SarahM]

Proud that our strength always lies in televoting

IMO televoting is great but Jury voting is still needed to help entries with more contemplative ballads, songs performing earlier on in the show, countries who do not have many neighbours to vote for them, etc. Televoting often favours the more lively, fun songs. It's good to maintain a balance of the types of entries in the competition.

Double posting my recommendation to watch the video by ESC Tom regarding the semi final 2 cheating if you have time, I found it interesting - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8d5NZ3_GiV8

 

[mitch67]

..well juries often vote as well for their neighbours , so... this point is not realy a reason to keep juries..

 

[midnightsun]

Juries are even worse (more predictable, more easy to manipulate) that televoters.
However, we do have to keep them, otherwise we will have another blockvoting domination. The jury itself should be replaced though. 5 members are too few (in pre televoting times the jury consisted of ten at least iirc). There should be an international jury with people from all nations, not only from their own country. Why not a jury consisting of one member of each of all 40 (circa) participants?

 

[dixenborg]

I think calling the different juries with their votes and the iconic twelve points/douze points is an important and iconic part of the contest which I wouldn’t want to lose.

I do think five members is too small. Maybe you could have five professionals and five members of the public or even a larger demoscopic jury as well as the experts. I appreciate this might be more complex for broadcasters but five is too few with too much influence.

 

[mitch67]

even if it is just five, in order to have a proper jury casting its vote and not some algoryhtms, after one found out about irrgeluarities, maybe it is good to have at least one substitute jury.. and keep names to yourself , so they cannot be bribed...

besides: even televote only was giving each participant the chance to announce the "douze point", before splitting up they got to give away 8, 10 and 12 points..

 

[hijirio]

Sweden’s jury points in the semi:

Australia 12
Estonia 10
Belgium 8
Malta 7

Sweden got from these countries:
Australia 12
Estonia 12
Belgium 10
Malta 12

but EBU will never have the balls to warn or ban Sweden

 

[Gitte]

Sweden’s jury points in the semi:

Australia 12
Estonia 10
Belgium 8
Malta 7

Sweden got from these countries:
Australia 12
Estonia 12
Belgium 10
Malta 12

but EBU will never have the balls to warn or ban Sweden

except that it gets high points from nearly all countries anyway and it's a song that everyone knew is jury friendly beforehand by it's structure. It's also not exactly weird it gives points to Australia and Estonia in particular. Belgium and Malta are less great but still radio-friendly, something the juries historically somewhat like.

If the known irregulality was Poland and Azerbaijan mainly getting a lot of jury points and giving 12's to each other, no alarmbells would ring off because guess what? It are very jury friendly songs. The problem is particularly that they also gave countries like Georgia and San Marino high scores, which have very little redeeming qualities for the jury.

 

[SarahM]

Sweden’s jury points in the semi:

Australia 12
Estonia 10
Belgium 8
Malta 7

Sweden got from these countries:
Australia 12
Estonia 12
Belgium 10
Malta 12

but EBU will never have the balls to warn or ban Sweden

I too would echo Gitte's comments. My reaction to your theory that the Swedish juries may have cheated:

#1 - Sweden was a hot favourite to win overall (and won this semi) so it's not shocking that they got 12 points from some countries, it's a jury friendly song which was professionally packaged.
#2 - Estonia's entry was quite popular, IMO had a very Scandi sound to it.
#3 - Belgium and Malta both were well packaged and highly produced, good vocalists. I could see how a jury may award these entries points even if they were not my favorites.
#4 - It could be possible that Swedish juries contacted Australia, Estonia, Belgium and Malta to arrange a points swap (I don't think this is the case). If they did, the EBU would have a hard time proving this, and so it would not be worth accusing these countries of cheating. In the case of the 6 that did cheat, it was done so in a very obvious way and the EBU were right to make examples of them.

 

[Kaz]

Sweden’s jury points in the semi:

Australia 12
Estonia 10
Belgium 8
Malta 7

Sweden got from these countries:
Australia 12
Estonia 12
Belgium 10
Malta 12

but EBU will never have the balls to warn or ban Sweden

In semi 2, Sweden received more sets of jury 12 points than any song in history. In fact, Belgium was one of only 4 (FOUR!) national juries who did NOT give Sweden 12 points in the semi final. This alone should disprove any idea of a shady alliance here.

Also, Belgium was one of the first countries to report about the jury corruption. Why would their national broadcaster write about the jury corrruption if they were scared about being investigated themselves?

 

[HarryUK]

Sweden’s jury points in the semi:

Australia 12
Estonia 10
Belgium 8
Malta 7

Sweden got from these countries:
Australia 12
Estonia 12
Belgium 10
Malta 12

but EBU will never have the balls to warn or ban Sweden

Sweden wiped the floor in SF2. They did not need a voting pact

 

[Ausesken]

I agree with the idea that, in case of rigged jury voting, the best is doubling the televote.

 

[nofuxCZ]

I agree with the idea that, in case of rigged jury voting, the best is doubling the televote.

Before 2016, if a jury result was deemed invalid, only televotes would be used. It happened in 2015 when the jury votes of Montenegro and North Macedonia were not accepted and only the televotes were used to calculate the points.

From 2016 onwards they changed the rules:

What if a country cannot deliver a valid jury result?
In order to secure the 50/50 balance between jury and televoting, a national televoting result can’t be used as backup result for the jury. Therefore, if – for whatever reason – a country cannot deliver a valid jury result, a substitute result is calculated by the jury result of a pre-selected group of countries.

I agree they should be doubling the televotes, that at least has some basis in reality as opposed to the arbitrary aggregated scores.

 

[Synergise]

For those that might be interested, I decided to look at each country's jury results in the final and work out what their aggregated jury result would have been if they had also had their results replaced. I've relied on two assumptions:

1 - Results from the Big 5 are based on the other Big 5 countries (i.e. they act as a 'big 5' pot). We don't know if this is actually the case.
2 - The results from pot 3 are based on the combined results of the two remaining countries in the pot. I believe this wouldn't be the case as it seems that the EBU used a 3 country minimum for the semi-finals. However, since we don't know what additional countries would be used for Armenia/Israel/Ukraine, I've stuck to using the two other countries from their pot.

The results for each country are on the google sheet below:

Jury Aggregates - Eurovision 2022

Jury Aggregates Big 5,Pot 1,Pot 2,Pot 3 Country,Total Aggregate Points,France,Germany,Italy,Spain,United Kingdom,Albania,Croatia,Montenegro,North Macedonia,Serbia,Slovenia,Australia,Denmark,Finland,Iceland,Norway,Sweden,Armenia Czech Republic,6,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Romania,0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Portuga...

docs.google.com

To clarify, these would not be the results if EVERY country had their jury vote replaced. Rather, each country's column shows what their jury result would have been if they were the only other country to have their jury vote replaced. For example, if France had also had their jury vote excluded alongside the other 6 countries, their 12 points would have gone to Sweden, 10 to UK, 8 to Azerbaijan etc.

Obviously this system creates more extremes, with many more countries picking up 0 jury votes overall from this, and the UK/Sweden/Spain picking up points from every country bar one.