Melodifestivalen undoubtedly has the voting system with the most votes and most engagement of any National Final, but also the most complexity in its voting rules.
In last year’s final, a grand total of 26 million votes were cast from over one million devices, in a voting system where viewers could vote up to ten times per entry for free via the Melodifestivalen app in two different voting windows.
This article focuses on the heats, the five qualifying shows each week to get to said Grand Final. How we pick first place and second place, and even the third place final qualification, err, qualifier, has changed from last year.
What are these changes, and how do they impact the competition?
Back to 2022
The main headline is that Melodifestivalen is changing the winner of each heat back to the same system as from 2022 to 2024. This is quite simple, the act that wins each heat is the act that has received the most votes. Simple.
This differs from last year’s competition where the winner of the heat was instead the act that won the most points via Melodifestivalen’s eight different voting groups, defined by the 7 different age groups of app users and a group for televoters.
Last year’s competition saw two minor schlager shocks in the heats, with both Erik Segerstedt and Saga Ludvigsson qualifying for the Final in first place. This is despite receiving fewer total votes than Klara Hammarström and Scarlett, who competed against them, but did not receive as many points in the Eurovision-esque voting system.
Choosing the winner of each heat by the number of votes likely shifts the power balance of the heat winner title towards younger tastes, as it appears that the number of voters in older age groups in Melodifestivalen has fewer active voters.
Melodifestivalen’s heat 2 result from last year demonstrates this clearly. Fredrik Lundman’s ‘The Heart of a Swedish Cowboy’ had a comfortable third place in terms of points in last year’s competition, but ultimately came in fifth in terms of number of votes, which determined the second-place qualifier in each heat.
With the winner of each heat chosen by number of votes, the second-place qualifier in each heat will be decided once again by the points given by each voting group. Each voting group gives points 12-10-8-5-3, with 12 points to their favourite and 3 points to the song with least number of votes.
Like in 2024, we are going to see these points live in the broadcast, with votes presented by the hosts for the eight different voting blocs to ultimately choose the act that takes the second place in the Melodifestivalen final. The one minor difference you might hear this year is that the voting bloc for televoting is being widened in presentation to explicitly name Radiohjälpen votes, votes that fundraise this year for Världens Barn (The World’s Children). Some app users (only over 16s) will, during the heats be selected to be in a trial where they can app vote (at a cost of 10 SEK, €0.95) beyond the prescribed five votes per app user – but these extra votes will go to the televote section of the voting sequence rather than the app users’ age group.
Televoting is now only available to do via the charity number, meaning televote votes all cost the premium 10 kronor rate.
Should the number of points be tied, the tiebreaker will be the number of votes each act receives.
The decision to bring back the voting spectacle is based on viewer feedback, with Project Leader Anders Wistbacka commenting how “fun it is that engagement was so strong” from viewers to bring back this spectacle and drama.
What About The Final Qualification Spot?
What is different from the 2024 process is that the voting presentation suspense will only decide second place in the show, and with that, the final direct qualification place to the Melodifestivalen final. In 2024, the song that finished second in this voting presentation was given that heat’s slot in Melodifestivalen’s Finalkval, final qualification round, where one extra song from each heat is competes for the final two spots in the final.
That is not the case now. The headline is that the final qualification place in each heat is decided, like the winner, by the total number of votes that each song received, rather than the age group voting system deciding second place. The 2024 competition actually saw four of the five heats have the song that came third place by points finish lower down the scoreboard in terms of number of votes.
But you won’t see this live on television. Instead, the announcement of who it was that actually finished third in each heat and remains in Melodifestivalen has been moved to after the program. Those wanting to see who that final qualifier is will need to tune in to SVT Play’s round-up program Aftershow program directly after each heat.
A Concept That Must Change
Respectively, this is arguably the worst bit of entertainment programming in this show’s long history. In Friday’s rehearsal this post-show content featured all the acts going onto stage, short awkward interviews about how it would feel if they got chosen, another recap despite voting is not yet open, and then, after ten long arduous minutes, a winner is unceremoniously announced, gives a short thanks, and then we cut to a preview of next week without a victorious performance.
It reminds me of the thrown-out rehearsal concept from Liverpool 2023, where the original plan was for acts in the Semi Finals to be brought onto stage to learn their qualifying fate. Not only is this terrible entertainment, this is unnecessarily cruel for acts to have their fate lingered for so long.
Artists have spoken to ESC Insight to express their displeasure in the new process. Jacqline, on her second Melodifestivalen appearence, confirmed that she would like the format of the final qualifier to change to the previous system.
“I feel like maybe not all of the people that are watching are going to transfer over to the app, so maybe they’re not going to see who qualifies.”
Indra was also sceptical to the new process. While saying “it was fun to go up on the stage again,” Indra pointed out that the new environment involving going on stage for the results left her all alone for those ten minutes.
“When you have a lot of people in the green room like I do, it would be comfortable to have those with you.”
After these quotes from artists after Friday’s rehearsal, we wrote the following comment from ESC Insight.
We emplore the leadership of this show to reconsider this moment from both an entertainment perspective and one of artist welfare.
The Saturday dress rehearsal did see this final qualifier slot change in style. Artists were kept in the green room with their delegations, and the recap was dropped. Interviews felt shorter and the rehearsal final qualifier was revealed after a break of around three and a half minutes, compared to ten on the Friday. While I can critique this part of the show and the channel switch from an entertainment point-of-view, this was far better for the artists involved in this final moment of tension.
Away from entertainment, there is also a technicality to consider in this anti-climatic ending. This format means that the song that is third on the scoreboard, with the age groups, is not necessarily the one which has the third-highest number of votes. Anders Wistbacka made it clear to us at ESC Insight that the final positions of the heat from 3rd to last will be included in the results table based on age-group voting, regardless of who receives the golden ticket to the final.
More Mello For The People
Quite simply, Anders Wistbacka sees this as a way to give “more Melodifestivalen to the people” by extending the show’s excitement over a longer period. And ultimately, the complexity of tweaking Melodifestivalen’s voting system once again stems from trying to increase engagement among the Swedish public in this competition.
Hearing the voting reveal sequence was popular; that is the reason it is returning, to create more of that exciting moment to bring more people to watch. Getting people over to SVT’s streaming service after the production is a, dare I say, rather cynical way of driving more engagement from viewers not just in Melodifestivalen, but also the wider public service offering from the broadcaster. Bringing in the Radiohjälpen charity fundraising voting method into the app can not just increase voting engagement and maybe drive further voting records this year, as well as increasing the money sent to good causes, which dropped significantly when Melodifestivalen’s app came to fruition in 2015.
Melodifestivalen is SVT’s only product that, week after week, attracts millions of viewers and tops the annual ratings charts. Of course, it should be used to get more people to engage with not just the program, but to try and bring more to the output of public service media as well. While I can be critical of some of the narrative choices that showing points in heats creates, and moving qualification announcements to a later broadcast, understanding how SVT as an organisation wants to bring in more engagement means I understand these choices.
And on the scoreboard, we all know that first place is by number of votes, second place is by age-group voting blocs, and third place is by number of votes again. Remember that viewers, and enjoy your schlager season.
[…] (January 30), the dress rehearsal took place in Linköping, and our friends at ESC Insight was in attendance, where they spoke with the artists, who commented on the current […]