Will Ukraine win Eurovision?

Disclaimer: we all know there are very serious events happening right now in Ukraine and I want to express my solidarity with the Ukrainian people. I do not want this article to be seen as trivialising the seriousness of the situation in any way and I hope readers can understand this is not my intention.

Eurovision can speak to a desire people have to find meaning, structure and patterns in the world, and we sometimes see that reflected in the contest’s odds. People will often look for entries with a story behind them and a contest result that could play out like a Hollywood script, rather than just quality songs that could impress audiences and jurors alike.

Cast your mind back to 2011. In the eyes of the Eurovision narrative-seeker, the story goes something like this: after just one top ten result in 11 years, audiences will be blown away by the quality of France’s opera entry, their first sung entirely in Corsican, and propel it to victory. Or in 2021: after winning Junior Eurovision in 2015, the 18-year-old Destiny seems fated to deliver Malta’s first Eurovision win. These things would deliver great stories in the eyes of narrative-seekers, but that’s not how things work. It can be hard for some of us to admit but both the world and Eurovision can be unpredictable, without greater meaning and sometimes a bit strange.

Not every entry with a story goes on to fail, though — both Jamala in 2016 and Conchita Wurst in 2014 came with stories relevant to the world at the time. ‘1944’ and ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’, however, were both full-package entries with wider appeal than the aforementioned two.

Contextual factors that impact Eurovision results are often subconscious, reflective of familiar cultural styles or value systems in society rather than tied to geopolitical events or narrative building. For example — it’s been mentioned by a few people before so I take no credit for this thought — the rising importance placed on authenticity in many Western cultures was on full display in Eurovision 2021, when four of the top five entries were in languages other than English, and all five were at least partly self-written.

The value of authenticity is something the UK gets badly wrong. The powers that be often seem to think that writing a quintessential ‘winning Eurovision song’ (when no such thing exists) is the route to success in the 21st century, but viewers see through these cynical attempts. As mentioned in the attached thread, viewers don’t sit at home with a metronome studying musical theory, but they are able to subconsciously detect songs that follow a cookie-cutter formula.

Likewise, voters and jurors rarely sit thinking about world affairs before casting their votes. In reality, geopolitical events actually have very little impact on the contest. Let's look at some examples from the past thirty years:

• In 2003, despite Terry Wogan’s proclamation of the UK’s infamous nul points coming as a result of the ‘post-Iraq backlash’, the song and live vocals spoke for themselves.
• After Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia were not punished and Ukraine were not given ‘sympathy votes’. Ukraine finished in sixth, one place above Russia (who actually finished higher than their song warranted).
• In 1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina sent their debut entry which focused on the Bosnian War which was occurring at the time. The entry went on to finish 16th in a field of 25.
• After an escalation in violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict last May, many assumed Israel would be punished at Eurovision and their qualification chance fell by about 20 percentage points in the two days leading up to the first semi-final. In the end they qualified comfortably.

This brings us to 2022 and Ukraine. Had Ukraine’s original selection Alina Pash not withdrawn from the contest, we would be looking at an obvious favourite in the betting markets that managed to combine the wider geopolitical context with a song that could command strong support from both sections of the vote. Kalush Orchestra are much weaker contenders, however.

In a 40-country contest, an average winner would expect to get around 550 points. Even if Ukraine were to reach Norway 2009 levels of televote support (the equivalent of 360 televote points), they would still need another 190 points from the juries. Furthermore, since the 50-50 televote-jury format was introduced in 2009, no winner has finished lower than 4th in the jury vote. Just last year, Ukraine entered a much stronger song in a similar genre and had a favourable running order draw, but still only finished 9th with the jury, just shy of 100 points. Is it really on the cards that ‘Stefania’ could score twice that and achieve record levels of support in the televote?

There was a video out last week of the 2022 Melodifestivalen finalists reacting to some of this year’s Eurovision entries. This might appear to some like a meaningless reaction video, but bear in mind that these are the kinds of people who participate as jury members at Eurovision. Multiple finalists showed support for Ukraine’s domestic situation when they appeared on screen, yet not a single one mentioned Ukraine as among their favourite songs. Videos like this can be a decent indicator of how jurors (in Western Europe, at least) might react to Ukraine’s entry this year. That not a single one of the finalists highlighted ‘Stefania’ out of a small selection of entries does not bode well for Ukraine’s prospects with the juries in May. As one of the finalists put it: "it reminds me of last year’s… not as good, though".

There is also the possibility that Kalush Orchestra do not perform in person in Turin and participate via a live-on-tape performance instead, like Australia did last year. Those who watched the live-on-tape performances when they were released after last year’s final will remember most of them did not come close to replicating the staging and atmosphere of the actual contest. Participating in this way would be another blow to Ukraine’s chances.

Though a victory for Ukraine at Eurovision would make for a good narrative, this is one of those cases where people’s hopes have combined with uninformed opinion to skew a prediction market away from reality. At a 50% chance, Ukraine is far too short.

Tip: Lay Ukraine at 2.1

Image of Kalush Orchestra by Anastasiia Mantach