All eyes turned to the Grand Final of the Eurovision song contest Saturday evening. An average 9.9 million people tuned in, with a peak of 11 million viewers and an additional 10 million views on the YouTube livestream, making it the most watched final in the song contest’s history, according to the BBC.
Almost 50 years after ABBA became the first Swedish performers to win the competition with famous hit Waterloo, launching them to success, Sweden took first place for the 7th time this year, now tying with Ireland for the most Eurovision wins. Moreover, Loreen became only the second artist in history to win the famous song competition twice, having previously won in 2012 with Euphoria. The only other person to ever win twice is Johnny Logan who took first place for Ireland in 1980 and 1987 with What’s Another Year and Hold Me Down respectively.
After the jury scores were announced, Sweden’s entry Tattoo by Loreen was leading the pack with 340 points, with Israel and Italy behind with 177 and 176 points respectively. But, as we all know, the public vote can overturn the charts. After a tension-packed announcement of the public vote, it was revealed that Tattoo received enough points to earn the win. Sweden scored a total of 583 points, Finland finishing in second place with 526 points and Israel taking 3rd place with only 362 votes. Ukraine was hoping to become the second country to win 2 consecutive editions, but only took 6th place.
For those who are not familiar with the voting system at the Eurovision Song Contest, the very short explanation is this. Half of the final score is given by the vote of the professional juries and the other half comes from the public vote. Each participating country has a professional jury who awards 12 points to their favourite song, then 10 to their second favourite, then 8 and so on to 1 point. The public had a window of 15 minutes to vote from the moment the last performed song ends. The score of the professional juries is announced first, then the number of votes from the public is added to the scoreboard.
The competition was hosted by the UK city of Liverpool, on behalf of last year winner Ukraine. The BBC has staged the Eurovision Song Contest more times than any other broadcaster. Having hosted on behalf of other countries on four previous occasions, the competition took place in the UK in London in 1960, 1963, 1968 and 1977, in Edinburgh in 1972, in Brighton in 1974, in Harrogate in 1982 and in Birmingham in 1998.
According to tradition, Sweden will host Eurovision next year, exactly on the 50th anniversary of ABBA’s win.
As per usual, political statements did not miss from the performances, the war in Ukraine being a point of reference for several artists. Croatia’s punk rockers Let 3 had a YMCA – military fusion attire, making references to Putin as that “little, vile psychopath, rat”, while Switzerland’s Remo Forrer sang about not wanting to be a soldier and having to “play with real blood”, his performance featuring falling missiles in the background.
