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Comparing The Eurovision 2017 Semi Final Scores And Rankings Written by on May 28, 2017 | 5 Comments

Having caught up on sleep, John Egan has polished his abacus and taken a look at some of the noteworthy elements of this year’s Eurovision semi-final scoreboards.

The dust has settled. The crew have packed up and left. And 41 delegations have gone home; some elated, others deflated. The bulk of the competitors in this year’s Grand Final had to earn their slot through a semi-final. Let’s take a look at some of the more interesting outcomes.

There were 18 songs competing in each semi-final and half of the prequalified countries’ juries and public also voted on who should qualify. Therefore, when crunching numbers from the semi-finals, the maximum component score for each delegation is 240 points: 20 delegations (you cannot vote for yourself) times 12 points. Or a maximum of 480 points when combining both score components.

Semi-Final One

Portugal clearly won the first semi-final and topped both score components. Their televote total was 197 points, receiving points from every country and 82 per cent of the televote points on offer. Average televote score of 9.85 points. Nine countries awarded their televote douze points to Portugal. Salvador’s Sobral jury support was not quite as strong as his televote support: 173 points, 72 per cent of the maximum jury score available. Seven juries awarded Amar Pelos Dois the maximum douze points. Every jury gave points to Portugal.

Aside from Portugal, however, there was little agreement between the public and juries: while six other entries (Moldova, Sweden, Cyprus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Greece) were in both top 10 lists, the ordinal rankings were mostly rather different:

Place Televoting Jury Combined
1  Portugal  Portugal  Portugal
2  Moldova  Australia  Moldova
3  Belgium  Sweden  Sweden
4  Sweden  Moldova  Belgium
5  Cyprus  Azerbaijan  Cyprus
6  Poland  Armenia  Australia
7  Armenia  Czechia  Armenia
8  Azerbaijan  Georgia  Azerbaijan
9  Greece  Greece  Poland
10  Finland  Cyprus  Greece
11  Montenegro  Poland  Georgia
12  Albania  Finland  Finland
13  Georgia  Belgium  Czechia
14  Iceland  Albania  Albania
15  Australia  Iceland  Iceland
16  Slovenia  Montenegro  Montenegro
17  Latvia  Slovenia  Slovenia
18  Czechia  Latvia  Latvia

Source: Wikipedia.

Moldova was 2nd with the public and 4th with the juries and 2nd overall. Sweden was 4th with the public and 3rd with the juries and 3rd overall).  Cyprus was 5th with televoters and 10th with juries for 5th overall. Armenia was 7th with the public and 6th with juries and 7th overall. After that it gets a bit messy. Azerbaijan was 8th with the public and 5th with juries and 8th overall: Greece was 9th with both the public and juries and finished 10th overall. And there was the heartbreak of Finland: 10th with televoters and 12th with juries, but their combined scores were only 12th highest. Remember: it is the scores that matters, not the rankings of each score component.

(Source: YouTube/Eurovision)

We also required two tie-breaks for this semi-final. (Un)Friendly neighbours Azerbaijan and Armenia had the same juries score, 87 points. Both also received a single douze points; however, Azerbaijan is ranked ahead of Armenia because Skeletons earned points from 15 countries. Fly With Me earned points from 14 countries. Cyprus and Sweden both earned 103 televote points, but Sweden’s two douze points trumped Cyprus’s one.

Semi-Final Two

Bulgaria’s victory was wholly unambiguous. Beautiful Mess rocked the televote for 208 points, receiving points from every country and 87 per cent of the televote points on offer, for an average televote score of 10.4 points! Kristian Kostov received douze points from nine countries. Bulgaria’s jury support was nearly identical: 199 points with no jury awarding Beautiful Mess less than 6 points. Nine juries gave Bulgaria their douze points. It’s a remarkably high and consistent result.

Aside from Bulgaria, however, there was little agreement between the public and juries: only five other entries (Belarus, Hungary, Israel, Norway and the Netherlands) were in both top 10 lists:

Place Televoting Jury Combined
1  Bulgaria  Bulgaria  Bulgaria
2  Hungary  Netherlands  Hungary
3  Romania  Norway  Israel
4  Israel  Austria  Netherlands
5  Croatia  Denmark  Norway
6  Estonia  Israel  Romania
7  Belarus  Hungary  Austria
8  Norway  Malta  Croatia
9  Netherlands  Belarus  Belarus
10   Switzerland  Serbia  Denmark
11  Serbia   Switzerland  Serbia
12  Ireland  Ireland   Switzerland
13  Macedonia  Croatia  Ireland
14  Austria  Macedonia  Estonia
15  Lithuania  Romania  Macedonia
16  Denmark  Lithuania  Malta
17  San Marino  Estonia  Lithuania
18  Malta  San Marino  San Marino

Source: Wikipedia.

Hungary was second with the public and 7th with juries for second overall. Israel was fourth with the public and 6th with juries for third overall. The Netherlands with only 9th with the public but second with juries for fourth overall. Norway were 8th with the public and third with the juries for fifth overall. Finally, Belarus was seventh with the public and ninth with juries for 9th overall.

(Source: YouTube/Eurovision)

Then it gets a lot messier. Denmark only scored 5 televote points (16th place) but their 96 jury points (fifth place) snuck them in at 10th overall. Estonia  were sixth in the televote (69 points) but 17th with juries (16 points): they ended up 14th overall.

And we had double ouches too. Malta got zero in the televote: even 8th place with juries could not save ‘Breathlessly’. San Marino got nul in jury support and a sole televote point from Germany (the Ralph Siegel effect?).

The Take-Aways

Nine of the top 10 Grand Finalists were qualifiers: Italy (6th overall) was the only pre-qualified entry in the top 10. Four came from the first semi-final, five from the second. Australia was only 6th in the first semi-final, but managed 9th in the Grand Final—in both instances thanks to massive jury support. In the second semi-final Norway was 6th and Romania 7th: in the Grand Final Romania were 7th and Norway 10th—mostly because Romania racked up massive televote scores in both the semi-final (148 points compared to Norway’s 52) and Grand Final (224 for ‘Yodel It’ versus 29 for ‘Grab the Moment’).

https://youtu.be/4GGPX5sJ4aA

(Source: YouTube/Orange Fresh)

Cyprus’s semi-final support level collapsed: from 168 points (103 public and 65 juries) to 68 points (32 public and  36 juries). It shows how much more competitive Grand Finals are compared to semi-finals. Similarly the Netherlands 200 semi-final points (51 public and 149 juries) dropped to 150 points (15 public and 135 juries). In other words, O’G3NE held on to more of their jury support: Hovig saw larger drops in both components.

When the jury and televote scored were synthesized to create a top 10 from each delegation, songs with skewed support either from juries or the public tended to get flattened scores—sometimes ending up with no points despite winning a televote. This current system treats both the public and jury score components equally. Some argue this rewards safe or unremarkable entries: I would argue that this precludes juror sniffiness to trump public appreciation.

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5 responses to “Comparing The Eurovision 2017 Semi Final Scores And Rankings”

  1. Emilios says:

    In the 1st semifinal you will notice that Cyprus was top 10 both in televote and Juries. You are saying that only Moldova, Greece, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Sweden achieved tha apart from Portugal. Minor detail but still a fact though.

  2. John Egan says:

    Fixed! Thanks!

  3. Eurojock says:

    In Semi 1 there were a number of surprises.

    Firstly, how well Australia did with the juries. They had a modern jury friendly song but young Isaiah’s execution of it left a lot to be desired, so I am astonished the juries didn’t punish him, Blanche-like.

    Talking of Blanche, City Lights, if anything, should have been a jury friendly song. It did astonishingly well in the televote and in the end it was the juries who pulled it down. Belgium must be left wondering what might have been had they turned up with better staging and a more experienced performer.

    Conversely Moldova was the epitome of a televote song but came 4th with the juries. It’s execution was so darn good that maybe in the context of a ballad-heavy semi, juries felt they couldn’t ignore it. Also, the song maybe just fell far enough into the ‘fun’ side of the ‘fun-novelty’ continuum for juries to convince themselves it had artistic merit.

    Armenia had a bad night. Listening to the views of a number of Eurovision betting tipsters, and on the basis of the plum number 16 draw, I thought this would win the semi. Instead, juries didn’t to for it and the diaspora seems not to have shown up in a big way. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the high percentage of Youtube dislikes for ‘Fly with Me’.

    Finland – Only 12th with the juries is astonishing. Okay, the song is dated and by and large juries tend to prefer more modern songs. However, in the context of the semi-running order and compared to what had preceded it, I can’t understand why this beacon of vocal and staging competence didn’t rank a lot higher with the juries.

    Finally Latvia. Can anyone explain to me why such a quality, contemporary number, with the advantage of the pimp slot, failed so miserably, particularly with the juries? The staging looked good. The vocal although not great was adequate for the type of song it was. Agnesse wasn’t too scary. The only real thing I picked up on was potentially the sound mix as broadcast wasn’t right, (not enough bass?) perhaps leaving the song lacking some energy and feeling a bit flat to the television viewer.

  4. John Egan says:

    All very interesting–thanks Eurojock!

  5. Eurojock says:

    And finally I’ve got round to taking a detailed look at Semi 2.

    This was a semi heavy with televote friendly songs – so there were opportunities for entries that were jury orientated to qualify as a result of a high jury rank. I predicted this with Norway, Netherlands and Denmark (although in the last case it didn’t do as well as I suspected, probably because juries had had their fill of big booming lady-ballads however well sung). Austria, it transpired, also fell into the ‘jury song’ category although to me, (although not to some others) it was not so obvious an example of jury fodder – particularly following reports that Nathan struggled to reach the big note!

    I wasn’t sure whether Hungary was a jury or a televote song or a bit of both. It turned out to be a televote song. I wonder if there was a large Roma diaspora effect at play here.

    Romania, Croatia, Estonia and Belarus were all obvious televote songs and so it transpired. Given the lack of strong contemporary jury songs, I thought the strength of the Romanian and Croatian entries in rehearsals might even sneak them jury top 10s. It turned out that I was wrong. Juries just don’t go for novelty songs, however good.

    Based on Elina Bjorn and Stig Rasta I always suspected that Estonia would do well with the televote and not so well with the juries. Given the absolute mess they put on stage in Kyiv, (see my comments on another post) it’s not surprising that they didn’t fare as well as predicted with either, and failed to qualify.

    Based on the combined semi-final rankings Switzerland clearly had qualification within their grasp. The song was good enough to qualify but they got the staging wrong and Miruna’s ill advised attempt to curry favour with juries by doing a bit of warbling in the final chorus (which in the jury rehearsals went wrong), probably sealed its fate.

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