The EBU have announced two major changes to the voting rules of the Eurovision Song Contest 2023 in a bid to “evolve the contest in a modern landscape“.
The two changes that the EBU have released are:
- Televotes alone will be used in the Semi-Finals, although the jury shows will stick take place for the back-up juries to vote on (incase anything goes wrong).
- There will be an international set of points, from countries that do not participate, that will make up a Jury 1-12 points and a Televote 1-12, equal to one participating country’s points. However, it will all be from an online vote and no jury will actually be used.
In the final, the system will remain the same used since 2016, whereby Jury votes (alongside half of the International Online votes) will be presented, followed by the Televotes.
This seems to have been done in response to the Rigged Jury Scandal in Turin, when 5 juries tried to rig the Semi-Final result. Sietse Bakker, Executive Producer of the 2020 and 2021 Eurovision Song Contests, and member of the Eurovision Reference Group tweeted about the decision, offering slightly more insight.
The Rest of the World Vote, as explained in the EBU’s FAQs, had been introduced to recognise Eurovision’s global reach and to evolve the contest in a modern landscape, where it does have a significant number of viewers outside Europe. The fact that there won’t be a rest of the world jury, and their online viewer votes will just be doubled in both the jury and televote results, has the side effect of making the overall result of the Grand Final now 50.6% in favour of public points.
The Rest of the World will not be able to vote for free, just like Europe. However, they will be able to vote online, but by using a credit or debit card to vote, each voter will be securely authenticated to avoid the possible vote rigging you’d see from an online platform. Additionally, if someone from a participating country used a credit card from their country to vote, their vote wouldn’t be registered as they do not count as “rest of the world”. It has been pointed out that the charge, and the use of a credit/debit card, may put off international viewers from voting.
Some Eurovision fans are worried this might be a sign of things to come, with a return to 100% televote coming in the Grand Final at some point, something which caused a calamity of issues when used between 1998 and 2008. However, for 2023 at least, these are the only changes occurring.
Colour me skeptical.
Very skeptical.