Lock ‘Em Up And Throw Away The Key: 2013s Scandalous split Results

It’s 2021 and the Eurovision Song Contest is as healthy as ever. There’s plenty to look forward to for the coming year and already the rumour mills are churning out exciting stories. Despite all that I believe it is important to go back to the rumour mills of 2013. The contest is in a very different place to what it was in 2013 and I believe now is the right time to do the one thing the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) will never do – release the 2013 split results.

For those of you who may not be aware of what has essentially become a meme in the Eurofandom, each year the EBU normally reveals detailed voting results of the contest for transparency’s sake. These show how individual jury members voted and give full televote ranks these days but had another role in the past. Before 2016, the results format for the contest involved the EBU combining the televote rank with the jury rank in each country, resulting in them only having to present one set of points per country instead of the two sets given now. As a result, in these earlier years the detailed voting results was the first time members of the public could see how much the juries and televote agreed and how the results would be different if only one set of voters had been included. However, in 20013 instead of publishing the full rankings each countries jurors and televoters would have awarded, the EBU only uploaded the average ranks each country got in the two voting groups. The problem with this is, the Eurovision points system does not work on total averages between countries but only considers the top 10 of a country’s vote. This means it is impossible to work out who would have won the 2013 contest had it only been for juries or only for televoters.

In the upload of these “detailed results” the EBU themselves highlight this as a problem from this presentation of the results. Which begs the question – why on Earth is this the format they chose to upload them in?

“Ireland finished 26th in the Grand Final – lower than twelve countries ranked higher by televoters and three countries ranked higher by juries, who all received more points by ending up in the top-10 in individual countries.”

EBU: https://eurovision.tv/story/split-results-of-eurovision-2013-revealed

In other words then, just because a country has the lowest average rank from either the jury or televote in their semi-final does not necessarily mean they won the semi for those voters. So whilst being accurate data of the events that unfolded in the 2013 contest, they potentially don’t tell us very much that is useful for analysis.

So why is this the case? Surely comprehension and transparency of the results is the whole point in revealing detailed voting at all! Well back in 2013 the EBU did have an answer for that which they rather kindly put accompanying the rankings:

To protect the fairness of the voting, the EBU does not release the split ranking of televoting and jury per country. Publishing these numbers would explicitly highlight if countries don’t meet the televoting threshold – the minimum number of televotes needed to become a statistically valid result – is and where thus only the jury voting was regarded valid. Explicitly highlighting these countries could lead to unwanted disproportionate influence on the televoting in these countries in future years to come.

EBU: https://eurovision.tv/story/split-results-of-eurovision-2013-revealed

Fair enough…

“But hang on a minute” I hear you say, “didn’t you just say that since 2016 the rankings of jury and televote have been split and presented separately in the results?” To which I have to say “You are absolutely correct!”

So what changed?

Well back in 2013 there were many allegations of cheating and corruption circulating he internet surrounding Eurovision, cumulating with Lithuanian news site 15min, unveiling a full recording and translated transcript of alleged vote buying. This probably explains why the EBU were so keen to not be broadcasting the countries with low televoting populations as this “unwanted disproportionate influence” would be easier to achieve if it was common knowledge which countries required the lowest number of additional votes to swing the results. If you wanted to bribe enough televoters to give your country some additional points, you could merely consult this list and pick out the lower voting countries where your vote would have more influence. Therefore not revealing these points is very much a result of the increased vulnerability the contest was facing and I at least believe was likely a measure to make it harder to artificially change the Eurovision results. So with the very different context of this contest it makes sense that the EBU would not have been comfortable releasing the results back then. The thing is though, if showing the split results back then would have had that impact, surely doing it now would have the same effect (even if the climate is now very different) and yet the EBU is happy enough publishing them.

So if that’s not it what changed?

I find it particularly interesting the EBU mentioned “become a statistically valid result… only the jury voting was considered valid” as it implies that in 2013 there was at least a few occasions where the EBU did have to discard a country’s televote. This is curious as whilst we know San Marino for example has an aggregate televote used as it cannot provide a televote, little discussion exists surrounding other countries with low populations who’s televotes are presumably used these days. In a very interesting article (though take it with a pinch of salt, as it references Wikipedia heavily and a site with April Fools of all things in its url) Physalis Franchetti discusses countries who potentially wouldn’t be able to provide “a statistically valid result”. In this discussion, countries with a population size smaller than Bulgaria (inclusive) and with low viewing figures were brought up as potential candidates to be required to have their televotes discarded, as the voting numbers would not meet basic statistical confidence thresholds. If multiple countries from the same pot (countries assigned by the EBU to have similar voting habits) were to fail to give statistically significant televotes these days, it would be interesting to know if the EBU would invalidate them and use only a few countries results for a whole pot or if the EBU isn’t using a threshold system to validate whether a country’s televote can be used. Whilst we don’t have solid proof this system was ever used, the wording of the 2013 results and the findings of Franchetti’s research suggest it may well have been.

In that case then surely new measures would have to have been put in place by the EBU? This is possible and a lot of it would likely go unseen, be that in the way phone operators monitor for suspicious activity or even how the EBU assess information on the televote they may obtain which does not get shared with the public. I certainly hope (and imagine) there are stringent measures in place! Then again if there are other measures in place and the countries at risk of having their votes influenced has already largely been worked out anyway… What is the need to keep the 2013 split results secret now?

Of course the EBU may not want to admit what action they had to take in 2013, that would be perfectly understandable as if they had disqualified televotes people had paid to place, that would obviously be controversial. However, it is 2021… I doubt people will really be all that upset if it is revealed that their countries televote could not be used in 2013, if they can even remember how much they spent on televotes. Another reason could simply be keeping those countries secret was the priority in 2013 and whilst it is no longer so important, time has gone on and the EBU haven’t seen the importance of updating the information.

But take it from me. This fandom loves data and understanding every last detail of the contest. So rather than leaving us with empty columns in our spreadsheets, incomplete trends and less accurate conclusions – it would be nice EBU if you just released this information. And if the results were interfered with at least showing us them would show that you made efforts to tackle it and bring about a fair result, not releasing anything just leaves speculation and keeps alive the rumours of yore. The split system has proven itself to be workable and at the very least, I am sure the EBU could give us a better excuse than that as to why they won’t release the results!

Will the EBU ever release this data? I don’t think so but maybe you disagree with me there! Feel free to have a discussion as always and sharing the article is as appreciated as ever! Take care and see you next time!