Eurovision Song Contest is an event that unites people. Brings people together. Builds bridges. Celebrates diversity. It does all that and more. The judging format is divided equally between "expert" juries and televoting. Every country has it's own 5 person jury. The voting consisted solely of televoting prior to 2009, when the juries were introduced. Since then the juries have killed the dreams of many, many countries.

So, why are there juries in the first place? Why should the influence of a 5 member group be so much higher than those of millions of viewers? The jury format predisposes the competition vulnerable for strategizing. There is speculation that the jury might intentionally vote for countries that are out of the race in order to advance their own country’s chances. This is repulsive and completely unfair to all the participants involved.

Juries were introduced in response to diaspora and political voting. It needs to be taken account that the juries also use favouritism. In 2019 some of the jury votes were emphasized of judgings that favour neighbouring and specific "friend" countries. The issue lies not only in televoting. The juries may have their own biases and preferences that influence their voting decisions.

In 2022 we experienced the inevitable, which was the jury voting scandal. Below is a part of the EBU’s statement regarding the case.

"In the Second Semi-Final, it was observed that four of the six juries all placed five of the other countries in their Top Five (taking into account they could not vote for themselves); one jury voted for the same five countries in their Top 6; and the last of the six juries placed four of the others in the Top 4 and the fifth in their Top 7. Four of the six received at least one set of 12 points which is the maximum that can be awarded."

To summarize, votes of the six juries were removed by EBU and replaced by the votes that were created by an algorithm. The juries of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania and San Marino cheated and voted for each other.

Full EBU statement on the jury scandal

Of course the biggest impact is on the winners of televoting. The first time the juries destroyed the dreams of the televoting winner was in 2015. Italy won the televote, but at the end, Sweden was the winner because it had the most points from the juries. This wasn’t the only time the same issue occurred. In 2016 Sergey Lazarev won the televoting by a landslide, but was still left 3rd while Ukraine sneaked to victory. In 2019, Norway won the televote with 291 points. Juries gave this peoples favorite country only 47 points. The most recent case happened this year, who won the televote with 376 points. Sweden, who got more than 100 points less in the televote, got 340 points from the juries and was therefore announced the winner. Finland was second, although it was the clear favorite of the audience.

Is it fair, that only a handful of people decide 50 % of the result, when there are more than hundreds of millions of possible voters everywhere around the world? Removing the juries would be the most ideal solution, but reducing their power to a modest 25 % would be a great start. We have to stop the overpowering juries.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest
https://eurovision.tv/about/rules