Eurovision 2023: Benidorm Fest betting preview

Patrick Flynn

30 January 2023

This week brings with it the second Benidorm Fest, Spain’s Eurovision selection contest, and hopes and expectations will be high after a successful inaugural edition produced a podium finish at Eurovision for the first time since 1995.

Jury oligarchy?

There have been some significant changes to the format in this year’s competition which become clear after a bit of research. While there officially remains a 50/50 split between public votes (divided equally between televotes and a demoscopic jury of Spanish citizens) and jury votes, the way points are distributed now means that split is no longer in practice.

In 2022, the minimum score an entry could receive in the final from both the public and jury was 10 points and the maximum was 60 points, so each group was allocating points within a 50-point range.

This year the public and jury will still award an even amount of points, but the range for the juries is 80 (16 min, 96 max), while for the public it's just 48 (32 min, 80 max). If we allocate every entry their minimum score of 48 (32 public, 16 jury), the remaining range of points has a 62–38% split in favour of the juries.

Furthermore, jury points will be weighted more heavily towards international members. In the previous edition there were three domestic and two international jurors, but there are now five international members of the jury while the domestic count remains the same. The international jurors will now have more effective voting power than the entire Spanish public.

The jurors

With the jurors wielding so much power, we need to know who they are. While some are famous names in the world of Eurovision, there is little public information about others. Doing a bit of digging, the average age appears to be somewhere around 50, about 10 years older than the average Eurovision juror. So, while some genres may be disproportionately popular among the Spanish public and younger viewers, I suspect it’s the radio-friendly entries with more universal appeal that will impress this year’s jury.

The skews towards older, international jurors in this year’s contest raise some red flags regarding some of the early favourites - current odds-grid-favourite Fusa Nocta (best odds 5.5) and Blanca Paloma (13) in particular could suffer. I just can’t see international jury members in their sixties awarding high scores to Fusa Notca’s ‘Mi familia’, a song with an unconventional structure and a contemporary Rosalía-esque sound which isn’t particularly big outside of the Spanish-speaking world.

Last year's result saw Tanxugueiras, performing in a localised genre, amass a whopping 71% of the televote, but it got buried by the juries and finished a measly joint-fifth out of eight entries (and even that was with a majority-Spanish jury). Fusa Nocta could well end up in the public’s top three, but the jury signs do not look particularly positive.

Stream if you wanna go further?

Streaming stats are a pretty good (and growing) indicator of televoting success at Eurovision national finals, and are a great way of seeing which songs are taking off with domestic audiences outside the Eurovision bubble.

At this point in 2022, Rigoberta Bandini and Tanxugeiras were the top two entries on Spotify streams and ended up as the top two entries in the televote by a comfortable margin. As always, I recommend checking out TellyStats for this data.

This year, Vicco is dominating the Spotify charts, with almost twice as many streams as Fusa Nocta in second. Her entry ‘Nochentera’ is a catchy, radio-friendly number and should also do well with jurors. Though I have some reservations about how this might be staged (the staging needs energy and positivity), the fact this is available at a best-priced 13 to win is a steal. I suspect that price might not last very long.

In a respectable third on Spotify streams is Agoney, who ought to be the favourite to win. ‘Quiero arder’ is a Eurovision-ready song with everything going for it — a high ceiling with both the public and jury and great staging potential.

In addition, Agoney looked a confident and charismatic performer during the October TV special that showcased the Benidorm Fest artists, whereas some of the other supposed favourites looked a little awkward and lacked stage presence.

The only concern I have about this entry is the similarity of the chorus to Ukraine’s ill-fated 2019 entry ‘Siren Song’. I can’t remember if the jury members got to comment during the show last year, but if one of the panel brings up this comparison (or, worse, accuses Agoney of plagiarism), it could damage his chances. Concerns aside, though, this is a very strong contender and is still available at 6.

Those are my two value picks. I’ll have another article out ahead of the final, but if you’re looking for early value in the betting markets then make sure to get in before Tuesday’s semi-final. Benidorm Fest is a Eurovision anomaly in that actual points are announced in the semi-finals rather than just the qualifiers, so we’ll probably have a very good idea of the top two or three before the final even begins.