Hell No, I don’t want your money: Eurovision’s secret spending?

30/05/2021

Eurovision 2021 is over. The songs have all been performed. Europeans (and more) have all gathered around their TV sets and phoned in to vote. Celebration and disappointment has been felt by many a performer, who gave their all on stage, in a quest to bring home the glory of the ESC crown. Yet, the drama lives on.

This is Eurovision after all and where the stakes are high, the controversies will be equally elevated.

The Times of Malta’s Ivan Martin and Matthew Xuereb caused quite the stir amongst eurofans, when their article revealed that a Maltese minister was now investigating the Maltese broadcaster over claims of financial mismanagement. According to their sources, large sums of money was placed on bets to lift Malta up the odds. They also reportedly splurged on paying undisclosed influencers money to promote their song – all from the Maltese taxpayer’s pockets. These serious allegations will of course be looked into in the investigation (and do not involve Destiny in any way) and I by no means want to speculate on what has or has not happened at the contest. Instead, I would like to divert your attention to why this matters and maybe even what lessons we can take from this ordeal.

First of all, let’s talk betting odds. Whatever you do betting odds are inevitably going to influence the outcome of Eurovision results. If people have invested money in a country winning the contest, it logically follows that they will vote for them to try and secure a reward for their investment. Obviously, way more people watch Eurovision than just those placing bets and this will only ever be an indicator of the anticipated results but the betting odds should at least in theory be a fairly accurate way of predicting relative Eurovision success. The team over at Eurovision World do a good job of tracking the betting odds each year and indeed many of us follow these closely to get a good idea of which of our favourites stands a chance at winning the contest. Looking at this years odds from the day before the contest, you can see eventual winner’s Italy and runner’s up France in those respective places in the odds – Malta of course in third. There is a substantial gap between these three countries and the rest of the pack, which ultimately wouldn’t materialise for Malta.

So maybe the odds being potentially manipulated caused some fans to lose money, either through betting on a song with less support than they anticipated or by voting for a song they thought stood a chance when it didn’t. But at least in my eyes, there is a more major problem here if those rumours do turn out to be valid. These changed odds would be a form of manipulation both towards the public and contest organisers that is deeply alarming. When it comes to picking aspects of the contest such as the running order (where Malta did get a desirable spot at least in the semi final) or even more simple things such as which songs to use to promote the contest – it is very much likely betting odds will have been considered, after all what better way to monitor the public’s love for a song than by what they are willing to back up with their cash? If false bets were placed on the contest and then these were considered as a valid poll of the public’s attitudes towards the contest’s songs, this could lead to increased promotion and production focus in the creation of the TV show. Furthermore, the public would be being manipulated to believe that the country had a much loved song and would be reminded of how seemingly popular it was more. And of course if this were to happen it would be utterly corrupt. But its only a song contest right, so there is no reason for this to happen? Well yes and no.

Whilst on one hand who wins Eurovision is not the biggest issue in the world, winning does come with considerable financial perks for the host. From the promotion of local tourism to the focus on your culture and it’s modern outlook towards the world; there are a fair few perks which come with winning Eurovision on a political and economic scale. Do we really want it to be possible to cheat your way to these perks and gamble taxpayers money on that as well? More alarmingly however, is if this is true and media companies have successfully figured out ways to get around betting companies checks on gamblers, who knows what other organisations could have picked up similar strategies and be influencing the public in dubious ways? It is deeply concerning to think of the nefarious ways in which this practise may being used and the implications it could have on our freedoms – especially if governments got behind these measures?

The second allegation here related to paying international media for positive promotion and again artificial hype. This kind of paid promotion on sites such as YouTube has to be declared by vloggers to be legal and whilst it is completely acceptable to hype a song (I love Je Me Casse by the way – go Destiny) these allegations seem to suggest Maltese tax payers’ money was being paid out to someone to say they loved the song and it was a threat to win (whether the thought that or not). So two issues off the bat there, first of all if the allegations are true it is this very questionable use of money, which could have been spent on a lot of beneficial services for local communities. And secondly, either Eurovision advert media sites are out there – which sounds incredibly unhealthy for the community in my opinion – or there are potentially people failing to follow advertisement laws.

So how can we make this incredible community even better and stop scandals like this in their tracks? Well, there’s no easy answer. For me, my main take home is to be ever more skeptical of what I read and watch. Betting odds can be manipulated, not everything you read is 100% real and there is a lot at stake when it comes to even things as seemingly insignificant as Eurovision. Never be embarrassed to love a song that’s popular or not and always stay true to yourself. And for me that means I will be streaming Je Me Casse for years to come, irrespective of these results.

A bit of a deeper article today, sorry about that but I felt like this was too important not to at least mention. I hope you still enjoyed the read though and if anything you found at least some of it thought-provoking. Thanks as always for reading and feel free to comment and #OpenUp a discussion.