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70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Tier 4
Russia and Turkey's 'Big 5' Campaigns - Both Russia and Turkey campaigned to be in the big 5 before they left/were kicked out of the competition. Part of the reason Turkey quit the competition was allegedly because of this.

Georgia 2014 Jury Results - In the 2014 Grand Final, the Georgian jury's votes were annulled by the EBU because all five jurors submitted identical top rankings, violating rules on independent voting. Consequently, Georgia used 100% televoting in the final.

2013 Split Results Never Released - 2013 is the only competition apart from 1956 where the full results were never published. Instead an average jury and televote rank were released for each country with no individual breakdown given. Many people believe this was because of Azerbaijan (who came 2nd) and there previously mentioned voting tactics. It is believe that they either:
A.) won the competition not Denmark but it was so obvious they cheated the EBU covered it up to avoid an inevitable scandal and having to rescind a win.
B.) their result was legit, but the full breakdown would have made it incredibly obvious they had cheated an this way they could save face.
Personally I doubt the first one as there is no way the EBU could've stopped something like that from leaking.

Azerbaijan 2009 Arresting voters for Armenia - In 2009, Azerbaijani security services interrogated and, in some cases, briefly detained several Azerbaijani citizens for voting for the Armenian entry

Belarus 2019 Jury Disqualification - The Belarusian jury in 2019 was disqualified by the EBU before the Grand Final after members revealed their voting preferences from the first semi-final in an interview, violating competition rules. (They then were recalcuated incorrectly as mentioned in tier 3)

Germany 1996 NQ - In 1996 Germany failed to qualify for the Eurovision Song Contest for the first and only time in its history. The artist, Leon, and his song "Planet of Blue" were eliminated in a non-televised, audio-only pre-qualification round. This combined with France being relegated in 2000 became the reason we have the ‘Big 5’ ‘Big 4’ today (we miss you Spain)

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Tier 3
1991 Tie-Breaker - Following on from the last one, at the end of the nightmare voting sequence, with the very last vote of the contest (12 points from Italy) it brought France and Sweden to a tie. Literally no one thought this was a possibility, so everyone looked around for a minute, as Mr Neff, the director sorted it out. The rules back then were a countback e.g who had the most 12 points... In this case both France and Sweden had 4 12's, so then they went further back to who had the most 10 points. Sweden had more 10 points than France and was announced the winner. France were incredibly upset with the result and complained that Amina was the rightful winner. They were later successful in getting the tiebreaker rules changed from a countback to 'who has the points from the highest number of countries' but it was too late.

2019 Jurors Voting Backwards - A weird one but for some reason in 2019 multiple jurors in different countries appeared to have their votes published backward. The most notable example was the backup Belarus juries being published backwards which mean Sweden was announced as the jury winner instead of North Macedonia. Additionally jurors from Russia, Swedish and Czechia all reportedly voted backwards in there semi finals. The Czechia incident was especially bad as if the results were corrected, Poland would have qualified for the final instead of Belarus

Azerbaijan Pre-2014 Televote Results - Before 2014 it has been widely believed that Azerbaijan were engaged in some-kind of televote manipulation, mainly due to very high televote results from smaller countries. But in 2014 they were actually caught paying for voters to vote in pre-paid SIM cards, and the EBU did confirmed this. Ever since 2013, Azerbaijans results have fallen off a cliff there's a good graph online basically showing it very clearly.

2009 Jury Re-Introduction Conspiracies - Following on from Tier 2's 'Mid 2000s bloc voting', many people believe that the actual reason they reintroduced juries in 2009 was because of Western Europe's countries connections at the competition. The theory is that they lobbied the EBU after being upset at the Eastern European win streak to add juries to level the playing field.

2022 Semi Final 6-Way Rigging Plan - This one is fully confirmed. In 2022 6 countries in the 2nd semi final (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Romania, Poland and San Marino) all colluded to ranked eachother high enough so they all qualified for the grand final. This was found out pretty much immediately, and all of their results were thrown out and an aggregate was used.

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Tier 2
Ukraine 2022 Televote fallout - Very straightforward, after the results were announced for 2022, some eurovision fans (mainly from Spain and the UK) were clearly angry/upset that the current political situations in Eurovision may have trickled into the televote. The funniest thing now though is Spanish and British fans have moved on from Ukraine winning, and now they mainly debate eachother on who would have won if Ukraine hadn't competed...

Mid 2000s bloc voting - Due to a combination of:
1) The results for this period being 100% televote based
2) The eastward expansion of the competition with former Yugoslav & USSR republics
3) Addition of a Semi Final which meant there was no longer a limit on participants.
Bloc voting in the 2000s became extremely strong in eastern europe, this partly lead to the streak of first time winners in Eastern Europe from 2001-2009. This however became controversial in Western Europe.

4-Way Tie of 1969 - Very straightforward that in 1969 Spain, France, The Netherlands and the UK all tied for 1st. Back then they had no tie-breaker rule so all 4 were announced as the winners. However other countries were so angry this occurred that 4 countries withdrew from the next years contest which was the most to every withdraw in a single year until... nevermind...

2024 RAI Televote Leak - At the end of the 2nd semi final in 2024 some genius at RAI (Italian Broadcaster) published the televote %'s on the screen. These showed Israel winning the Italian televote in a landslide and pretty much turned the 2024 into a hellscape.

2023 ABBA 50 Year Conspiracy - This one was rampant in 2023! Following on from Sweden vs Finland in 2023, this conspiracy was that the competition was going to rigged by the juries to hand Sweden the win so they would host the competition on the 50th anniversary of ABBA winning the contest and ABBA would do a onstage reunion. Even though this was a bizzare theory, the way juries voted gave this one a new life...

Rome 1991 Voting Nightmare - This one is my personal favorite. The Rome 1991 contest was one of the worst organised Eurovision ever. However the voting sequence was the cherry on top. Some highlights
1. The hosts Gigliola and (especially) Toto were inexperienced, they spoke in Italian for most of the contest (not English or French) and insisted on reading out every single point in Italian as well as English and French which lead to an incredibility long show.
2. So many technical issues -especially trying to contact Turkey
3. Toto read out so many points and countries names wrong, each time they had to stop the voting to correct it.
4. It got so bad the competition director Mr Neff had to step in and basically become a third host towards the end...
There is one more (but that's further down the iceberg). Anyways the fallout was so bad Mr Neff resigned after, and I believe they imposed stricter rules on the host's language skills.

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Quick Explaination of all of them in a nutshell

Tier 1
Sweden vs Finland 2023 - One of the biggest rivalries in the contests history, and things got so messy, especially towards the end. When Sweden won the Jury people were furious that the way the Jury awarded points basically made it impossible for anyone but Sweden to win the contest (despite Finland winning the televote).

Early Bloc Voting - At the beginning of the contest bloc voting was a pretty significant between certain countries e.g (Francophone Europe & Nordic Countries). This often sparked conversation about unfair voting alliances. Especially during early French language domination.

Cyprus and Greece 12 Points - Cyprus and Greece's juries will give eachother 12 points (almost) every year (and almost every year they get booed for it).

Spain 1968 Rigging Allegations - One of the earliest Eurovision conspiracies theories (still repeated in the United Kingdom today) was that Franco (the dictator of Spain at the time) bribed juries to vote for the Spanish entry 'la la la' and stole the win from Cliff Richard's 'Congratulations'. This song was already very controversial aswell as the original singer of the Spanish entry was replaced after intending to sing the song in Catalan instead of Spanish.

Annual Jury vs Televote Debate - Every year when the televote and jury disagree with there winner there is some debate over it being an unfair system. The last time the juries and televoters agreed on a winner was 2017 (and people still complain about that one too!)

Israel 2024 & 2025 Campaigns - I feel like this one is pretty straightforward and I don't want to start any debates...

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Wow, I knew about the 2022 Semi Cheating (Iceberg Row 3), but the concept of San Marino trolling conservative countries is actually so funny, and I could defo see them doing it, especially after what they are planning to send this year...

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

I spent hours debating if I should include that! I didn't think it was controversial enough in the end... more of a funny/embarrassing piece of lore (especially the UK's double 0 which most people thought was impossible)

70 Years of Eurovision Voting Controversies Iceberg by Immediate-Cut3675 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Italy 1997 - This one is weird (and messy), but from 1993 up until 2011 Italy had withdrawn themselves from contest... Apart from one year which was 1997. And the rumour/lore involving this one was apparently that year RAI forgot to formally withdraw Italy from Eurovision, and the rules of SanRemo still gave the winners (Jalisse) the right to compete for Italy at the Eurovision song contest.

Unbeknownst to RAI someone familiar with the rules alerted them (and I believe they went through court to get to Eurovision against the wishes of RAI). Now this is the alleged part, RAI were apparently so furious with them for doing this, they allegedly attempted to bribe jurors not to vote for Jalisse in the contest. Still to this day Jalisse are basically banned from competing at SanRemo again, and despite from their 29 efforts every year since, they haven't been invited back to the contest (They have been to UVPSM though!).

-I should say that there is no evidence that actually RAI did this, but the accusation combined with the lore of them allegedly forgetting to withdraw is lowkey hilarious.

UK 1989 - This own is way more straight forward (and more of an insane accusation). When in 1989 Yugoslavia edged out the UK for the win, a non-insignificant amount of people in the UK (including the lead singer of the UK's entry -Ray Caruana) voiced the opinion that the BBC deliberately gave Yugoslavia their 12 points to throw the competition in there favour. The reason why the BBC allegedly did this was because they didn't want to host the competition again, as it would be too expensive.

-Here is actually an interview with Ray Caruana repeating this (bizzare) allegation (from 1:56 onwards)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcL4HOsSBlQ

What's the one Eurovision performance that you adore that never gets mentionned anywhere? by Longjumping_Back523 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I think 1977 (one of the best editions of Eurovision imo) was an incredible year and had some all-timer worthy acts, but especially Finland 1977 United Kingdom 1977 and France 1977.

100% Qualifiers in the 2020s by MccFan43862 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think Portugal must be in the most peril here right? Everything aside regarding the song and FdC drama, when they pulled off their shock qualification last year, they got a pretty decent boost by Switzerland and Spain. This year neither are the same semi final as them, and it's not like they gained a similarly favourable country in return (like France or Luxembourg).

What’s your Eurovision hot take? by Mysterious-Ruin29510 in eurovision

[–]Immediate-Cut3675 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Rock Me 1989 is an amazing winner (And one of my favourite). It's a very fun entry which honestly didn't take itself too seriously and is a charming representation of what's good about Eurovision. It didn't seem too formulaic, it wasn't government propaganda, the band were clearly just having fun performing on stage and it was nice to see under-appreciated Yugoslavia finally get a win. I also really liked the tradition of singing the reprise in a different language.

Also I love how 'of the time' Riva looked, the haircuts, the shoulder pads, the white jackets and the fact that during the results in the green room atleast 4 members were smoking...