Why Now Is The Right Time To Remove The ‘Big Five’ Rules Written by Ben Robertson on September 28, 2023 | 1 Comment

A Short History Of The Big Five Rule

Eurovision folklore may tell you today’s Big Five rule is a reactionary ruling to what happened in 1996 when a pre-qualifying round of 29 countries was used to eliminate seven deemed surplus to requirements for the show in Oslo. One of those knocked out was the German entry ‘Planet of Blue’, meaning Germany did not participate in the Contest that year.

The German broadcast without German participation was a ratings disaster, with television chiefs there relegating the live broadcast show to a minor channel, and rather than send a commentary team out to Oslo used one based in Hamburg.

The following year, Birmingham 1997,  saw the qualifying round dropped and the three-year points average returned, deciding which broadcasters were relegated for twelve months. A recognisable Big Five rule arrived in 2000, when the European Broadcasting Union gave the “four largest contributing participants”, Spain, Germany, France and the United Kingdom their “Big” status (Italy regained their status on returning in 2011). This rule meant they would be given immunity from relegation and therefore a guaranteed spot in the Eurovision Final each and every year.

And they have held that immunity ever since. Even as the rest of Europe upped their game, as Semi Finals became first one, then two, the Big Four were languishing at the bottom of the scoreboards year after year, Nothing seemed to threaten these nations’ privileged place in Eurovision Grand Final. Even the cultural highlights of Rodolfo Chikilicuatre, Scooch, Les Fatals Picards and whatever Dita Von Teese added to that German entry didn’t get the EBU to move even the slightest bit in making the playing field more equal for all participating nations.

Is Money To Blame?

I’ve always been told that if something doesn’t make sense then money is likely to blame. And as I was starting to join the Eurovision community in the mid-2000s, money was the explanation being peddled. However, it’s not as simple as these broadcasters paying more to get access. Yes, they do pay more as the continent’s bigger broadcasters, but the gulf between Spain’s participation fee (about €350,000), to that of Romania (about €180,000) and Ireland (about €105,000) isn’t so vast considering the size of the nation’s economies or populations.

Crucially, Romania couldn’t have just decided to pay double their participation fee last season to get Theodor Andrei to the Eurovision final.

The Big Five are important for another side of the economic conundrum… sponsorship. Sponsors to the Eurovision Song Contest wanted to be seen attached to the primetime broadcast in the biggest markets of Western Europe – and should history repeat itself and Germany not make the Grand Final the threat is that millions of viewers would not be tuning in on Saturday night. In comparison, another Estonian non-qualification would mean at most a few hundred thousand miss out.

What Do Sponsors Want Today?

Is this fixation on viewing figures the be-all-and-end-all today? What is the viewpoint of Moroccon Oil, TikTok and booking.com to this protectionism? The thing is, it might be a lot less important now than ever before. A generation ago those TV viewing figures were the most important data point – that was the key metric in measuring the reach of the show and its production. Nowadays we are just as likely to talk about YouTube views, Spotify streams and Instagram engagement as we are the viewers at home on a Saturday night; these social media behemoths are far more likely to have those younger audiences that today’s sponsors are most desperate to impress.

You don’t need to get to the Grand Final to benefit from all the rest of the trappings that the Eurovision Song Contest of today offers as a platform. We live in a world today where the number of viewers on that Saturday night in May are roughly half that who are reached by Eurovision content via TikTok alone during just Eurovision fortnight, never mind the pre-party and National Final season. The goalposts have shifted and Saturday night is no longer the most important part of any sponsors’ consideration.

Risk Versus Reward

It would be a monumental risk for the EBU to scrap the protectionist Big Five rule we have today. Getting rid of such a rule could, on paper, increase the quality of both the Eurovision Semi Finals and the Grand Final but it would risk losing millions of viewers for the Contest’s finale. It also risks a media backlash from those biggest markets and I can only imagine how much louder those Brexit-based “we should withdraw from Eurovision too” remarks would have been through this Big Five era when the United Kingdom was stuttering through some of the worst form in the Contest any nation has had, and potentially not having visited a Grand Final since Jessica Garlick in 2002.

Yet the Big Five rule should only be in place if we need the protection that it serves to provide. The economic circumstances of today where Eurovision’s strength lies outside of its Grand Final broadcast means that protection is less and less needed. Eurovision today is where hit music comes and flourishes and we live in a world where Eurovision is cooler than it might have ever been. This all together means the timing has never been more perfect to remove such a rule change.

But to pull the trigger on such a change would be a radical step. Dare the stability-searching EBU risk a move of financial unsteadiness in times of global worry about rising inflation rates from Latvia to Lisbon?

This is about balancing risk and reward. Removing the Big Five rule would give the reasonable reward of a better quality production over the three nights. We can’t deny that this move comes with risks of lower viewing figures and sponsors getting itchy feet, and the follow-on risks of higher participation fees and further withdrawals.

But Brand Eurovision has never been better placed to absorb those potential risks. There might never be a better time than right now to make Eurovision an equal playing field for all.