Trading Eurovision national final season

For people like me, the start of the year means one thing: it's Eurovision season. The main contest is becoming a bigger trading event every year and with that, interest has also grown in the national finals — the mini-contests which many countries employ to decide their Eurovision entries.

With national final season now underway, here are a few quick tips for Eurovision fans wanting to trade successfully.

It's not about you (or your tastes)

Remember this and try to be neutral. Songs you like may not be as well-received in a particular country and certain entries not in your native tongue might have lyrics that resonate with viewers in Portugal, Norway or elsewhere, even though they pass you by. Sure, use your own intuition about a song's inherent strength, but try and find some objective domestic stats on the popularity of each song, where possible. The fantastic TellyStats, for example, hosts Spotify stream counts on their site which can help track the popularity of songs in their native countries. Those following Melodifestivalen last year will have seen Tusse's landslide victory coming a mile off by looking solely at Spotify streams. Granted, the demographics who use Spotify are not necessarily the same as those voting in each national final, but it's a good tool nonetheless.

Be ready to strike when publicity manipulators are active

While this is a rare opportunity, it's still worth looking out for. There are certain traders around who do not play by the same rules as you or me, seeking to generate publicity rather than profit. Vested interests are sometimes happy to dump money into exchanges in order to make their entry the favourite and ride the wave of positive publicity that comes with it.

For low-volume events, markets can be pretty easy to manipulate with just a few thousand pounds and an end goal. Occasionally we see this in political markets, where candidates will try to artificially inflate their own odds, but we also saw it in Eurovision on a bigger scale last year when the Maltese delegation was accused after the contest of buying YouTube views and manipulating the betting markets to generate hype around their entry as the bookmakers' favourite. Shrewd traders could have successfully laid Malta even on the day of the contest at around 5.5 (18%), despite a historically very tricky running order draw of 6th.

More recently, in Spain's upcoming Benidorm Fest (which starts tonight), the band Unique came from nowhere to briefly trade as 2.02 (50%) favourites on Smarkets a few weeks ago for no particular reason. Their entry has the third-fewest number of Spotify streams and sits with less than 1% of the vote on EurovisionWorld's 18,000-strong poll. Those that noticed this spike could have laid Unique at very favourable odds.

Look at the voting system

It's a simplistic but important point: every national final is unique. Again, Benidorm Fest is a great example here. In this new national final format with an untested voting system, we have a situation where the televote will account for just 25% of the overall vote. Another 25% will be sourced from a 'demoscopic jury' of Spanish citizens and 50% from a jury of music experts made up of just five people. That a five-strong panel is going to decide half the outcome of the competition raises the prospect of an unpredictable result and a potential outside win.

Similarly, Norway's 100% televote system threw up a surprise last year. Many fans assumed KEiiNO were a shoo-in to win Melodi Grand Prix and represent Norway once again. They topped all the fan polls, had in my view the strongest potential for Eurovision success and the markets made them clear odds-on favourites. Had Norway used a 50-50 televote/jury system like Eurovision does, they probably would have won, but TIX's popularity in his homeland saw him defy the odds and cause an upset win.

2022 is set to be another record-breaking year for Eurovision trading at Smarkets. I had the pleasure of writing multiple articles for Wiwibloggs last year but this time around we will also have lots of content here on our new hub. Watch this space.