EurovisionBets&Pieces: The Eurovision Finals' Data Analysis that rules them all!!!

Two weeks ago that would be a post about the 2020 market favourites and the trends of the market but it was obvious that this Eurovision was not meant to happen and sadly we have the first contest that was cancelled. Though I do believe that this is the last of the things that we currently have in mind and the decision to cancel was the right thing to do.

I do believe that an era has closed and next year we will have a very different reality in terms of the contest. I am sure that we will see countries withdrawing next year because of lack of funding unless EBU cuts down the cost of participation. We maybe see countries out of Europe participating to balance the numbers but that's something that we will see in the future.

Trying to beat the pre-post cancelled Eurovision depression, I have decided to start posting some technical pieces to keep you some company while being in lockdown and with plenty of time in your hands.

The first post will be about the Finals. I have gathered the split results for the years 2016-2019 plus the years 2014 and 2015. There was a different voting system them, but since we do have available the split results it does help to have a bigger sample in order to be able to draw some conclusions.

The question that I have tried to answer is what's the recipe to become a winner. What's the ideal combination that guarantees the win and here are my findings. Fasten your seatbelt and let's start!!!

Winners' rankings with Juries and Televoting

So far we have the following combinations for the winners

2014: Austria:           J: 1 - TV: 1
2015: Sweden:          J: 1 - TV: 3
2016: Ukraine:         J: 2 - TV: 2
2017: Portugal:        J: 1 - TV: 1
2018: Israel:             J: 3 - TV: 1
2019: Netherlands:  J: 3 - TV: 2

Out of the six winners we do have two clear favorites that won both the Juries and Televoting, two that won one of the two and were 3rd on the other half and two winners that haven't topped either of the two. Netherlands won last year even though it finished third with Juries and second with Televoting and it is more impressive that Italy who finished second was 4th with the Juries and 3rd with the Televoting.

The average Jury rankings for the winners is 1.83 and the Televoting 1.67.

The average points for the winner are 581.7 or 60.85% of the maximum available points that equals to 7.3 pts per jury or televoting.

The best scoring performance was from Portugal 2017 with 758pts, 77.03% of the maximum points or 9.24 pts.

The lowest score for a winner is Netherlands' 2019 498pts, just 51.88% of the available points to grab, an average of 6.23 pts.

The average difference between the winner and the second place is 83.2 points. The biggest lead was in 2017 with 143 points of distance between Portugal and Bulgaria and the smallest mark the 23 points that secured the win for Ukraine in 2016 with Australia coming really close.

What's more important? Winning the Juries or the Televoting?

This is the most interesting part of the analysis. I observed the Top-5s in the final rankings and for Juries and Televoting seperately and these are my findings:

Average rankings with Juries and Televotings from Winner to 5th
Winner:  J: 1.83 - TV: 1.65

2nd:        J: 3      - TV: 2.5

3rd:         J: 5.2    - TV: 4.17

4th:         J: 6.12  - TV: 4.67

5th:         J: 6.5    - TV: 7
There is a pattern there. Televoting tends to score slighlty better than the Juries and that is because Televoting winners tend to have wider margins and score more consistently than the Jury winners! Have a look to the average points for each place for Juries and Televoting individually.

Winner:  J: 299.5 pts / 62.66% of maximum available points
              TV: 337.7 pts/ 70.65% of maximum available points

2nd:        J: 238.8 pts / 49.96% of maximum available points
                TV: 280 pts / 58.58% of maximum available points

3rd:        J: 208.1 pts / 43.54% of maximum available points
              TV: 243.5 pts / 50.94% of maximum available points

4th:        J: 182.1 pts / 38.09% of maximum available points
              TV: 215.5 pts / 45.08% of maximum available points

5th:       J: 160.1 pts / 33.49% of maximum available points
             TV: 183 pts   / 38.28% of maximum available points

Televoting secures a 23-38 pts handicap on every place. We have to go to the 7th place to see Juries scoring better than Televoting ( 134.6 vs 125.8). Finishing 3rd in Televoting is better than finishing 2nd with Juries and gives a clear advantage. The reason for that is the longer tail with the Juries. They tend to distribute their points to more countries. From 7th to 25th Jury points have a higher average than Televoting. Be it professionalism or the exchange of points between allies the jurors tend to vote more countries.

The next thing I did was to check the average rankings on the other half and the final scoreboard for the Top-5s in Juries and Televoting (eg: Jury winner: what's its average ranking in televoting and the average ranking in the combined scoreboard)

Juries
Winner: TV: 5.67  - Final Ranking: 2.5 - Deviation +4.67 / +1.5

2nd:        TV: 7.83 - Final Ranking: 4 - Deviation +5.83 / +2

3rd:         TV: 4     - Final Ranking: 2.83- Deviation +1 / -0.17

4th:          TV: 11.8 - Final Ranking: 6.17 - Deviation +7.8 / +2.17

5th:          TV: 6.33 - Final Ranking: 5.33 - Deviation +1.33 / +0.33

Televoting

Winner:  J: 5.67 - Final Ranking: 2.5 - Deviation +4.67 / +1.5

2nd:         J: 3      - Final Ranking: 1.67 - Deviation +1 / -0.33

3rd:         J: 9.5   - Final Ranking: 3.67 - Deviation +6.5 / +0.67

4th:         J: 7.33 - Final Ranking: 3.83 - Deviation +3.33 / -0.17

5th:         J: 13.83 - Final Ranking: 6.67 - Deviation +8.83 / +1.67

The winners of the individual boards have secured three wins but only have the 2nd best average.

The best place to be is finishing 2nd in televoting that has an average ranking of 1.67. That spot has given two winners and four 2nd place finishings.

The other spot where Juries and Televoters tend to agree more is finishing 3rd with Juries that secures an average ranking of 2.83 and has given the two winners in the last two years: Israel 2018, Netherlands 2019. This is definitely a trend that we should keep in mind

The other important finding is that Televoting tends to be closer to the final rankings with smaller deviations and can survive and bounce back even when the Juries try to punish it.

Televoting has punished a Top-5 jury 6 times, ranking it below Top-10 and forced two of them to finish out of Top-10.

There were 8 cases where a Televoting Top-5 has scored worse than a Top-10 with Juries but none of these discrepancies forced a finishing outside the Top-10.

I hope that find these findings useful for your future bettings or Eurovision analysis. Will try to post as often as possible to keep the conversation going. Please feel free to comment or add any valuable insights.