How Should We Judge Success At Eurovision?

What is success?

Eurovision costs a fair bit of money to run. I mean it’s in the name Euro… Vision! For many broadcasters, “success” at the contest will revolve around having a high TV viewership to money spent ratio. Financially for many broadcasters Eurovision is simply a success story. But from the artist’s perspective “success” may well take a very different perspective. Sure, there are participating broadcasters out there, who rely heavily (if not entirely) on the participants to fund the presentation and promotion of their songs, but for many the risk Vs reward equation will be very different when evaluating their own “success”

Why participate at all?

The real measurement of success, surely comes down to the individual reason for the contestants desire to participate. Many of course will be entering to win. Who wouldn’t want that accolade and media attention? Are you a fairly unknown artist? Winning Eurovision will certainly get your name out there? Are you an established source of national pride? Winning Eurovision can help promote your latest song further and expand into new markets? But the bottom line is around 40 songs every year do not win Eurovision. To make matters worse, several of these acts will not even make it through to the prime time Saturday night show. As they say “there is no reward without risk”.

Is it all About Promotion?

This is where I find the show particularly interesting. In many ways Eurovision has the power to accelerate careers (everything from ABBA to Celine Dion to Måneskin) but that isn’t all Eurovision is about. In fact despite the name, I’d argue Eurovision is more of a culture festival than a mere song contest. There are more layers to the show than simply commercial fame.

Personalised Success Stories

Eurovision is an ancient TV franchise now (it’s old enough to have a bus pass here)! For that very reason Eurovision has a cultural and traditional aspect to it that can not be overstated. Who wouldn’t want to share their music, dance, acting, fashion etc to the world. Performers may have rules and regulations to obey, they may even have to rehearse their song to death or throw in lyrics they simply didn’t want. But, they get the stage to themselves for three whole minutes. The opportunity this brings to celebrate your culture, bring light to an issue (providing you can get it through the rule checking), champion your nation, have fun, network, grow your fanbase, share a non-mainstream musical genre or even poke fun at the contest itself. The possibilities to achieve something of worth to you are endless.

The Career Killer

But but Eurovision is a career killer and you risk being negatively branded with the contest if you don’t win. This statement is heartbreaking to any Eurofan hoping to see established artists take part, it is also not devoid of some truth. Disasters at Eurovision have killed some music careers but for many haven’t and personally it would be very interesting to look at the reasons as to why some seeming “flops” at Eurovision go onto great success whilst others don’t. Yet in many ways I could say the same about winners. So is Eurovision a risk if there is simply no guarantee it will help or hinder you long-term?

Planning and Perspective

I think it probably depends on a number of factors. Cliff Richard was largely expected to win in 1968 and he came second… Oucha! I personally love La La La and who knows maybe Cliff also likes the song, maybe someday I will find out but the bottom line is it must have been at least a bit disappointing to come so close but yet not bring home a victory. On another side, Cliff’s career doesn’t appear to have been affected at all negatively by the contest and Congratulations similarly established itself as both a Eurovision and 1960s chart classic. Sure it wasn’t a bad result but it shows winning doesn’t have to be everything.

Dana International made history winning the contest in 1998, in her 2011 reappearance, less-so. A former winner failing to even advance to the final is not exactly the chart topping success story the media would want to spin as the measure of success. In saying that it kept us talking about her in a time when many younger fans might have been less aware of who she was. Flash forward to Israel’s next win in 2018 and she is making an appearance as an interval act. In many ways doing Eurovision again (not to be confused with Eurovision again 😉) simply have her another platform to spend with fans, have fun and represent her country. As long as an artist knows what they are getting themselves into, I’d argue Eurovision is an opportunity.

“Block Vote, Shock Vote”

A famous turkey once told me that Eurovision was filled with political voting (all done in the medium of song of course). This matters a lot if Eurovision is about getting a good result. And let’s face it, most of the contestants will be gunning to try and win (though maybe not Dustin himself). If people don’t vote fairly, ultimately this may be snatched from your hands and people may judge you for flopping in a “silly song contest”. I have already written a fair bit here about political voting and I will be writing tons more in future, so I’m not going to deny that some more questionable voting patterns exist in the contest. However I think two things are worth noting here.

1. Block voting seemingly only impacts lower placements in the rankings and indeed many countries with historically poor televotes e.g. United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal have gone on to win the contest since the introduction of (at least partial) televoting.
2. Despite any result impacts there are so many more reasons to do Eurovision. For example, to send a singing turkey to make a statement about the evolution of the contest in an entertaining manner

Ultimately I think Petra and Mans put it best in their semi final interval act. Sometimes the contest brings out the best for people, sometimes not so much. Ultimately however, it is “an annual celebration of our culture” that if you can ride the highs and brave the lows will be of “impact” to you. Sure it’s a risk but at the end of the day “that’s Eurovision”.

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