Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down: A History of Tie-Breakers at Eurovision
In our latest deep dive, Steven takes a look at the photo finishes in the Eurovision Song Contest: when the points were tied, but there can only be one winner.
From the common sense to the downright arbitrary, Eurovision has had some pretty wild ways of separating a tie!
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Mentioned in this episode:
Carola - ‘Fångad av en stormvind’ (Sweden, 1991): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j2nWtNX8T0
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Transcript
In this week's episode.
Speaker A:Oh, Vienna.
Speaker A: Orf confirms the: Speaker A:To the surprise of pretty much nobody.
Speaker A:Russia's revival of Intervision adds another dictatorship to the roster, but not one that you might have expected.
Speaker A:And we're quick on the draw as we take a look at the evolution of the tiebreak process across Eurovision history.
Speaker A:I'm Stephen Perkins and this is Douzpoix.
Speaker A:Hello, London, we are ready for your votes.
Speaker A:Hello.
Speaker A:It's Monday 25th of August and the big news from the last fortnight is that we now know exactly where we're heading for next year's contest.
Speaker A: ast Wednesday that Eurovision: Speaker A:This does sadly bring Eurovision's six year run of being held outside of capital cities to an end.
Speaker A:But in all honesty, the smart money was always on Vienna to be confirmed as next year's host city, because pretty much all of the other cities that were interested lacked the necessary infrastructure.
Speaker A:The only other city that went all the way to submitting a bid was Innsbruck, and reports suggest that their proposed venue of the Olympiahalle didn't really meet the EBU's requirements, as apparently it couldn't have contained the stage and the green room at the same time, meaning that they'd need to put the artist's green room and the dressing rooms in a separate venue and ferry the artists to and fro, which felt like one logistical hurdle too many.
Speaker A:Also, a lot of Innsbruck's hotel accommodation is outside the city centre, whereas Vienna doesn't have that problem.
Speaker A:It is a little bit of a shame because one of the things that's been so joyous about the contest in recent years is seeing smaller cities get a chance to shine by hosting a major international event like Eurovision.
Speaker A:The fact that Austria didn't really have any viable options outside of Vienna does perhaps throw up some questions about the ever increasing scale of the contest and whether it's reaching a point where only the truly large or particularly wealthy nations have more than one option for a host city.
Speaker A:But that's a bigger subject for a different time.
Speaker A:In other news this week, Lithuania's head of delegation, Audius Girijadas, got the fandom talking when he hinted during an interview that there are plans for Eurovision to launch a post contest arena tour.
Speaker A:Speaking on Labas Ritas Lijutuva or Good Morning Lithuania, he intimated that the contest is looking to launch a 10 date pan European arena tour for 10 acts from the final of the contest, presumably intended to be the top 10, although I imagine they are still nailing down that level of detail.
Speaker A:It's an intriguing idea, although we don't really know how far along in the planning stages it is at the moment, and the EBU has yet to officially comment on the matter, so we're just going to have to watch this space for now.
Speaker A:And possibly the most baffling Eurovision adjacent news to come from the last fortnight is not about Eurovision itself, but about Russia's planned revival of Intervision.
Speaker A: tervision originally ran from: Speaker A: he Eurovision song contest in: Speaker A:At present, the inaugural edition of the new Intervision is scheduled to take place in Russia on 20 September this year, with participants including Russia, China, Ethiopia, Kenya, India, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Speaker A:But there's been a slightly left field addition to that list with the revelation that the United States of America is planning to take part, with singer Brandon Howard set to represent them.
Speaker A:To be perfectly honest, we're not planning to do any extensive coverage of Intervision on this podcast because we've got enough scandals in our own song contest, thank you very much.
Speaker A: ry curious eye on Intervision: Speaker A: ts in Eurovision history, the: Speaker A:It seems unthinkable that Eurovision managed to run for 13 years without anyone involved coming up with an official system to resolve a scenario where more than one song ended up in first place.
Speaker A:But what's even more bizarre is that it took another 20 years for the contest to come up with a system that didn't just involve ask the juries to vote again.
Speaker A:And it's a system that the contest has tweaked multiple times over the years, becoming ever more intricate and complicated.
Speaker A:So I thought it would be fun, if that's the right word, to devote one of our episodes to the history of ties and tiebreaks at Eurovision and how we got to where we are now.
Speaker A: y of ties all the way back to: Speaker A:So if there were ties in that first contest, we don't know about them.
Speaker A: In: Speaker A:Luxembourg and Germany tied for fourth place with eight points, and Belgium and Switzerland tied for eighth place with five points.
Speaker A:However, since it didn't affect the outcome of the contest, with the Netherlands winning by a margin of 14 points over second place France, there was no particular need to resolve the ties and they were allowed to stand.
Speaker A: made until the result of the: Speaker A:But I know what you're thinking.
Speaker A:How close did we get before that?
Speaker A:Should the EBU have seen this coming?
Speaker A:Well, to be perfectly honest, yes, they absolutely should.
Speaker A: the top a few times prior to: Speaker A: In the: Speaker A: And then in: Speaker A:So even from those, there really should have been some alarm bells ringing.
Speaker A: But what really makes the: Speaker A: Eurovision: Speaker A:And yet somehow the organisers still did not see the writing on the wall.
Speaker A: clear to me, we went into the: Speaker A:And we ended up with, needless to say, the whole four winners thing didn't really go down terribly well.
Speaker A:After all, it was a full quarter of the songs that entered that year, which did make a slight mockery of the whole thing.
Speaker A: all boycotted the contest in: Speaker A:But it's generally, generally understood to have also been a protest against the four way tie from the previous year.
Speaker A:So where did that leave us?
Speaker A:Rules wise, the EBU decided it wasn't in their best interest to have multiple winners at the same contest again.
Speaker A: So from: Speaker A:In the event of a tie for first place, the juries would vote again between the tying entries until they had a majority for one winner.
Speaker A:There's not a lot of information on exactly how this vote would have been conducted, and we never actually ended up in A situation where it was implemented.
Speaker A:So I don't know what would have happened if, say, the revote had also ended in a tie.
Speaker A:But frankly, I like to think it would have been a bit like when they have ties at the Tribal Council vote on Survivor and if they couldn't reach a decision under normal circumstances, they would have ended up having to draw rocks out of a bag to determine the winner.
Speaker A: was officially in place from: Speaker A: s this time and looked at the: Speaker A:For whatever reason, it was decided that a revote would not be a sensible manner of doing things and instead we moved on to a new system.
Speaker A:This time the winner would be the song that had received the highest number of maximum 12 point scores from other nations.
Speaker A:If it turned out that the tie was still there after all the 12s had been counted, we'd move down to the 10 points.
Speaker A:And if at that point the tie still hadn't been resolved, then however many countries were involved would have been declared joint winners of the contest.
Speaker A:Again, this rule only applied to determining the winner.
Speaker A: e remained in place until the: Speaker A:But wait, hold up there.
Speaker A:Before we go any further, we have a very important stop off to make.
Speaker A: That is the: Speaker A: In: Speaker A:At the end of the night, Italy was the last country to award their scores and the top three on the scoreboard were Sweden with 146 points, Israel with 139 and France with 134.
Speaker A:Italy didn't award any points to Sweden or Israel, but then gave their full 12 points to France, at which point we could see confusion in the green room as the scoreboard showed France and Sweden tied for the top score.
Speaker A:But Sweden's number was flashing, which seemed to imply that they were the winners.
Speaker A:So we were went straight to the Invigilator.
Speaker A:A quick bit of checking later and it was confirmed that while France and Sweden had Both been awarded 12 points four times, Sweden had received five sets of tens, compared to only two for France, giving Sweden the win.
Speaker A:And it's pretty lucky for the contest that there was a difference in the number of tens awarded to the two countries, because, remember, at this point there was no further tiebreaker to apply.
Speaker A:If France and Sweden had had the same number of 10s under the rules of the contest at the time, they would have been declared joint winners.
Speaker A:Given that the conversation between the invigilators and the host was carried out largely in French and Italian, there was a little bit of hesitation in the room before Swedish representative Carola realised that she'd triumphed and celebrated by performing her winner's reprise of Vongad Aven Stormwind, partly in English.
Speaker A:The tie was all resolved quite quickly on screen, and I can imagine all of the regional commentators were kept very busy that night explaining to the viewers what was going on, because it wasn't clear from the graphics at all.
Speaker A: Still, the whole of the: Speaker A:Ok, back to the rules.
Speaker A: ment was made to the rules in: Speaker A:From this point onwards, the tiebreak process would be extended beyond the 12 and 10 point countbacks to go all the way down to one point if it became necessary.
Speaker A:It was also extended to apply to the process for determining the qualifiers for the following year's contest, as this was back when we didn't have semi finals yet and were still operating a relegation system based on an average of scores from the previous five competitions.
Speaker A: pped again for some reason in: Speaker A: Come: Speaker A:The tiebreak would now be implemented both to determine the winner, if necessary, and also to determine the song qualifying in 10th place from the semi final.
Speaker A: By: Speaker A:Having multiple winners just generally wasn't acceptable.
Speaker A:So now, if we had implemented all of the previous tiebreak criteria and there was still not a decisive outcome, the Victor would be the song that had performed formed the earliest in the running order.
Speaker A:That is, to my mind, fairly arbitrary, and I can't help thinking that if we ever had had to use that particular rule to determine the winner, people would be up in arms.
Speaker A:But then, in the unlikely event that you get that far down the line and you still don't have a winner, what is the fairest way of resolving it?
Speaker A:Flip a coin?
Speaker A:Arm wrestling?
Speaker A:Sudden death?
Speaker A:Missing vowels?
Speaker A:Question like on only connect.
Speaker A:There's probably not a solution that everyone is going to feel good about, but in all honesty, the likelihood of it ever coming to that seemed fairly minuscule.
Speaker A: From: Speaker A:Intriguingly, all three nations had only received points from two countries, but Germany's 12 from Bulgaria put them in 23rd.
Speaker A:Poland's 10 points from Ireland got them 24th.
Speaker A:And with the United Kingdom's highest individual score being 8 points from also Ireland, we ended up in last place.
Speaker A: , the first occasion being in: Speaker A:Austria received no points at all, but Austria were spared the indignity of finishing dirt last because they performed in position number 14, while Germany were in number 17.
Speaker A: for now at least, came in in: Speaker A:From this point onward, it's been up to the televote to break any ties.
Speaker A:So the first thing to check is which of the tied countries received more televote points overall and break the tie that way.
Speaker A:If that doesn't resolve it, then it's which song received points from the most countries in the televote and then whoever had the most sets of 12 points, then 10 points and all the way down to one.
Speaker A:And if somehow we still don't have an answer it's the country that performed first who emerges on top.
Speaker A: he fairly memorable moment in: Speaker A:So for the purposes of the televote scoreboard only they were ranked from their running order, a rare win for the UK that year.
Speaker A:As having been in position number nine, we got to technically be 23rd in the televote, with Spain 24th, Germany 25th and the Netherlands last, though it hardly spared our blushes because of course we still ended up last overall with a grand total of 0 points.
Speaker A:Still, you have to take those victories where you can.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That brings us to the end of our journey through the history of tiebreaks at Eurovision, but I'm going to leave you with a very special teaser of what we've got coming up in two weeks time.
Speaker A:You may have heard me talking about the Eurovision Pod Crawl, in which a group of Eurovision fan podcasts all got together and decided to record episodes based on the unifying theme of years in which a particular country hosted for the first time.
Speaker A:Well, finally it's our turn.
Speaker A: lay, as we take a look at the: Speaker A:It's the year of Loreen's first victory, but also of our first encounter with Valentina Mineta, and also the year when the UK made the faintly baffling decision to send Engelbert Humperdinck.
Speaker A:But there's plenty more to discuss, so I hope you'll join us for that one.
Speaker A:And in the meantime, why not catch up on the other episodes in the series?
Speaker A:You can find out more about the other podcasts taking part and check out their episodes by visiting linktree.
Speaker A:Eurovisionpodcrawl that's L I N ktr EE eurovisionpodcrawl Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode.
Speaker A:If you've enjoyed it, please do subscribe if you haven't done so already, so that your podcast app will automatically download all of our future episodes.
Speaker A:And while you're there, if you wouldn't mind giving us a five star rating or even leaving us a nice review, we'd really appreciate that as it helps us to reach even more listeners.
Speaker A:Until next time, good night Europe and good morning Australia.
