The Terrible Twos: The Eurovision Death Slot Explained

Steven Perkins: 00:00:00

unces changes to the regs for: 2026

Plus second thoughts, why is it so hard to win from the so called death slot? I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Douzpoix. Hello, London, we are ready for your vote. Hello.

It is Monday, 1st of December, and in lieu of an advent calendar, we're bringing you a brand new deep dive into the history of Eurovision.

As I crunch the numbers to work, my second in the running order has historically been the spot that nobody wants and whether we can expect anybody to win the contest from there anytime soon. But first, as always, we're going to take a look through the headlines from the last fortnight.

plementing new rules from the: 2026

The number of jurors for each country being expanded from five to seven, with the stipulation that at least two jurors must be aged between 18 and 25.

The deployment of enhanced technical safeguards to monitor fraudulent or coordinated voting attempts, the maximum number of votes being capped at 10 rather than 20. And clearer rules on the promotion of songs and artists. Let's go through each of them in turn.

First of all, the return of the juries to the semi finals. It feels slightly farcical that this has happened as part of a rules patch to restore faith in the integrity of the voting process.

ies from the semi finals from: 2023

Having said all of that, I do ultimately support the return of the juries to the semi finals because I think it will make the process.

The problem with the system that we have at the moment is that the absence of juries in the semi finals means that all of the countries who have to actually compete in them try to enter the most televote friendly songs they can think of in order to secure their qualification through to the final, only to find themselves then playing by a completely different set of rules on the Saturday night when the juries are involved, and it creates a somewhat uneven playing field because it is a problem not faced by the Big Five or the host country.

While I don't think that bringing the juries back for the semis is a foolproof solution by any means, I do think that you need to score the semi finals in the same way that you score the finals, whatever system you are using. As for ensuring that there are younger representatives on the juries themselves, that's an interesting experiment.

he voting system used between: 1971

But it will be interesting to see how this change plays out and whether it leads to any sort of difference in the trend of the sort of song that juries tend to vote for. If it does lead to fewer discrepancies between the juries and the televote, overall I'm inclined to see that as a good thing.

y stated that the televote in: 2024

So this just feels a bit like window Dr. Perhaps more specific information will be revealed to member broadcasters at the General assembly later this week, but it doesn't seem like something we as mere punters can really draw much of a conclusion from right now capping the maximum number of votes at 10 rather than 20. I'm not fully convinced that this is going to restore the integrity of the televote to any noticeable degree.

Assuming that most normal Eurovision voters will spread their allocation across multiple entries that they enjoyed, this still means that a concerted or organised campaign for a particular country could skew the results.

To my mind, the way to tackle this problem is to do something similar to how the voting works at Junior Eurovision and cap the number of votes each person can give any particular entry at, say, 1 or 2.

Simply capping the overall number of votes allowed to be cast might slightly diminish the impact of a coordinated campaign, but it doesn't completely remove it. Finally, the promotion issue.

Under the new guidelines, disproportionate voting campaigns are discouraged and participating broadcasters and artists are not permitted to actively engage, facilitate or contribute to promotional campaigns by third parties, including governments or government agencies that could influence the voting outcome, and any attempt to unduly influence the result will lead to sanctions. Oh boy.

So after being repeatedly told that Israel weren't doing anything wrong for the last two years, the rules have been changed to explicitly outlaw the thing that they, and only they were doing.

d that if it happens again in: 2020

And yet the EBU have ignored what's been going on right under their noses until a group of member broadcasters force the issue again.

measured once we see how the: 2026

Though since the new measures were announced, both Slovenia and Spain have released statements that their positions remain unchanged.

Jose Pablo Lopez, the chair of Spanish broadcaster rtve, stated that the EBU knows that these measures are an improvement, but not enough and more importantly, they do not sanction Israel. We need more measures and this is what we will raise at the General Assembly. What we asked for months ago is the same that we ask for now.

The General assembly is due to be held on the 4th and 5th of December, so in our next episode, which will be the last one for this year, we'll take a look at the decisions that were made and what that means for the contest going forward.

In other news, the Kazakhstan Ministry of Culture and Information has stated that the EBU will consider the possibility of the country's debut at Eurovision early next year.

The Ministry has however, stated that their involvement in the contest would require a significant financial investment as the broadcaster Kabhar Agency lacks the necessary resources at present. Kazakhstan joining Eurovision is something that has been rumoured for a while now.

or Eurovision five times from: 2018

As an associate member of the ebu, Kazakhstan cannot apply to participate on their own and would require an invitation from the Contest Reference Group in order to take part. There have also been some odd developments coming from this year's Junior Eurovision set to be held in Tbilisi on 13th December.

The venue for the contest was originally announced as the Olympic palace.

However, on 24 November it was reported that it had been moved to the Gymnastic hall of Olympic City in the same city due to the unavailability of the original venue for an assessment visit by the ebu. These reports were subsequently confirmed through the official website.

It does feel like something is going quite wrong with the organisation of the contest for the venue to be changed at such a late stage, so I'm intrigued to see how this year's event is going to play out.

And finally, for those of you still wanting to attend the contest in Vienna next year, the Eurovision website has had a facelift and is changing from Eurovision TV to Eurovision.com and will allow fans to create their own EuroFan accounts with early access to tickets, exclusive merchandise and whatnot. So you might want to pop over there and give the new site a look after you finish listening to this podcast. Okay, so picture this scene.

Congratulations, you have survived the semi finals and made it through to the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest.

You are going to be seen on millions of screens around the world on Saturday night and you've theoretically got a 1 in 26 chance of winning the whole thing. But oh no, the producers have just revealed the running order for the final and the worst possible thing has happened. You are on second.

That's right, in the nearly 70 year history of the Eurovision Song Contest, nobody has ever won the competition from position number two in the running order to the point where it's outright regarded as entirely ruining the chances of whoever is unlucky enough to fill it. But just how doomed are you if you find yourself in the so called death slot? I decided to sit down and crunch the numbers to work that out.

So once I pulled my spreadsheet together, the first thing that emerged from the data is that while it is indeed true that nobody has ever won the contest after performing second, it's not the only cursed spot. People don't make quite such a song and dance about it. But nobody has ever won from 16th in the running order either.

It's also true that nobody has ever won from 25th or 26th, although there even being that many Spots in the final is a relatively recent invention.

year only became a thing from: 2008

he running order six times in: 1960

ourth in the running order in: 2003

ur way tie for first place in: 1969

However, none of these slots get the same degree of bad press that second does, and perhaps the reason for that is that few countries have even come close to winning from second to date.

Cathy Kirby with I belong in: 1965

and group Etnik with Dinle in: 1997

es who performed second since: 2004

Is it really being on second that dooms your chances? Or is it more that slot number two is a convenient position for the producers to drop an entry that they don't really have that much faith in?

was just talking about, from: 2004

But that feels like a bit of a borderline case at best. It was a moderate success both times it was performed, and it might have placed slightly better if it had been performed in a more favourable slot.

But: 2014

rritory again until we get to: 2024

It seems to be a place where producers are happy to drop either a song that qualified automatically for the final and is perceived as uncompetitive competitive, or a song that got through in the semis from somewhere between 7th and 10th place. In other words, acts that are just happy to be there at all and have no real expectation of winning.

And that's probably because ultimately, at the end of the day, the Eurovision Song Contest is a television show and the producers want it to have a sense of momentum. Ideally, you want to keep your big hitters to go out somewhere between the middle and three quarters of the way through.

You want a suitably climactic closing song and you want an opener that is going to get the party started. Somebody has to follow that spectacular opening, so why not one of the lower impact entries to give yourself somewhere to build up to from there?

And speaking of going on first, we should probably talk about that briefly.

Teach in with Ding a Dong in: 1975

Up until fairly recently, the narrative was always that you needed to be somewhere around 17th to 23rd in the running order to have the best chance of winning, and those are probably still the best slots you can hope for. But it's not completely make or break.

There have been a few occasions recently where a presumed frontrunner has been seemingly sandbagged by drawing a performance slot in the first half, but has still gone on to win.

weden's Larene with Tattoo in: 2020

One other thing I wanted to look at while we were here was whether any particular country had been overburdened with second place performance slots over the course of the competition.

emembered an era in the early: 2000

in front until as recently as: 2025

So what have we learned from all of this number crunching?

rly strong chance of winning.: 2024

So is there a chance that someone could win from second in the future?

Of course it's always possible, but realistically you are going to need producers willing to take the risk of putting a heavily favoured song in that slot in the first place. Which I imagine a lot of them aren't going to, but I'd love to see someone try that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

As I mentioned, our next episode will be the last one before we go on hiatus for Christmas and at present the plan is for that one to be a roundup of where we are in the wake of the ebu's General assembly later this week. So do keep an ear out for that one in the fortnight's time.

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