Should The EBU Enshrine Full Televote Number Reveals In Eurovision’s Rulebook?

Picture the scene. The credits are about to roll but not until the somewhat emotional new Eurovision champion on stage has given a full winner’s reprise. It’s the end of a long emotional rollercoaster of a voting sequence where you have been on the edge of your seat waiting in anticipation. Despite all this emotion there is one thing at the back of your mind – “Did my vote matter?”

Of course Eurovision voting isn’t free, sure it may be relatively inexpensive (costs vary from country to country in affordability of course but that is another story) but you have still chosen to give your hard earned cash in the aim of seeing your favourite win. It is only natural that you therefore want to know if your country gave your favourite top points.

At this moment your TV spokesperson makes a quick announcement as an infographic pops on screen and the stagehands begin to move the winner’s staging back onto the stage. A full run down of the jury members is given for transparency and then the moment we all have been waiting for since the winner was revealed, your country’s individual televote comes on screen.

By the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) rules, all countries participating in Eurovision must announce where their televote points went to after the contest. How they go about doing this though is subject to the broadcaster’s discerption and full voting numbers are not a requirement. Instead of telling you how many votes were awarded to each song, you instead will get simply the top 10 televoted songs, which does the job right? You know exactly who your country gave televote points to which at least in that moment answers your burning question.

There are many reasons why a broadcaster may not want to give full voting figures as well. For one, it could show a lack of audience engagement (or even worse a decline in audience engagement) which may well be just frankly embarrassing for the broadcaster. Another reason could be that as public service broadcaster’s there are additional legal loopholes to jump through when publishing data such as this. The third reason I want to suggest is that given by the EBU themselves that such numbers could compromise future votes by showing where there is low audience engagement to potential cheaters who would then use this knowledge to target buying sim cards in these regions. The logic being that a low number of votes mean that less televotes would have to be bought (and likely less money spent) to bump up a country in the televote.

“Publishing these numbers would explicitly highlight if countries don’t meet the televoting threshold”

European Broadcasting Union via Eurovision.tv

Despite these three reasons, I still think there is more the EBU can do here to increase transparency in the contest. Why? Simply because broadcaster’s who refuse to publish such information have done it before.

Let’s break it down though. In the battle between broadcaster embarrassment and transparency the EBU are in a no win situation. Embarrass broadcasters and you potentially lose participants and annoy your own members. On the other hand, if you don’t have a fully transparent contest you run the risk of scandal. Is this a reason to withhold data from the public and run a less open contest? I’d argue no, largely because countries publish viewing figures anyway.

The next possibility that I have heard discussed on this matter is that maybe being public broadcaster’s it comes down to legal requirements, for example as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is funded by the tax payer it is subject to rules imposed from the Charter on how the BBC should operate. The speculation here is that maybe some of these requirements mean that areas such as voting numbers are not to be made public to protect people’s data. It is also worth noting that in shows such as Strictly Come Dancing where BBC Studios (the privatised wing of the BBC) is involved, voting data is not made public at all because it is as such a private company and is under no legal obligations there. This is clearly a complex matter and the Charter is regularly updated and changed. However, it does seem odd that the BBC were able to publish full voting figures for the 1998 contest but can no longer do so. I also doubt this is a widespread problem amongst broadcasters beyond their own reluctance of publishing information if they don’t have to.

“Although the BBC is subject to the Freedom of Information Act, information which is closely connected to our programme-making is not covered by the Act. The Information Commissioner, who regulates the Act, has confirmed that information about public voting is not covered. We are therefore not required to disclose the voting figures under the Act.”

British Broadcasting Corporation regarding Strictly Come Dancing

Again this kind of debunks the last potential reason for this withholding of information that sprung to my mind. If we know that exactly 407,167 UK votes were cast in 1998, according to archives of the BBCs own website, then assumptions can be made pretty quickly about what it would stand at today. The bottom line is though, if a country really wanted to manipulate a televote, trial and error would give them the answers they needed soon enough. As a result of all this I find this a poor excuse to not make the modern day contest as transparent as it was in ’98!

So are there potential areas of difficulty with publishing full voting statistics for each country? Potentially. However, I think many of these have their work-arounds. Certainly if the EBU decided to put it in the rulebook that countries had to publish a little more information, I would hazard a guess most broadcasters (if not all) could reluctantly adapt very easily.

Beyond transparency it would also just be nice to know though… As someone who paid for a televote, I’d like to know if maybe buying two more would have awarded my favourite another point!

If you can think of any other reasons why this data may not be made public please feel free to discuss them either here or on social media (where you can share this article if you want *hint hint*). I’d love to see this information available for everyone to understand and I personally believe it would be beneficial for the contest’s image. Maybe you disagree though! Either way I hope you enjoyed the read.